Mexico and Its Religion. Robert Anderson Wilson
crazy thing, it seemed, almost ready to be blown to pieces; but it was gallantly facing the tempest, and riding out bravely against the combined force of wind and waves. But she mounted the waves, one after another, without any difficulty, though held by but a single anchor, as the strain on her cable was eased away by the action of her paddle-wheels, which were kept in motion by an engine of the smallest class ever put into a river boat. This was said to be the most violent Norther that had visited Vera Cruz in a century. It destroyed sixteen vessels, and caused the loss of thirteen lives; and yet so small an amount of steam-power was fully able to bear up against the dreaded fury of a Norther, and to insure the safety of the vessel.
THE BUCCANEERS.
Vera Cruz, like almost every other Spanish American seaport town, has its traditional tales of the horrors committed by the buccaneers, or filibusters. The history of the buccaneers, their origin, their fearful exploits of blood, the terror that their name even now inspires in the minds of all Spanish Americans, are too well known to demand a repetition here, though we may give the substance of their story, by saying that they had their origin in a laudable effort to avenge the gross wrongs inflicted by the Spaniards upon the honest traders of other nations, while trafficking with the native inhabitants of America, within the region which the Pope, as the representative of the Almighty, had bestowed upon the King of Spain, to conquer and subdue for the benefit of the Church. Elizabeth of England raised the question of the validity of the title of the King of Spain derived from so questionable a source, and insisted that he had no rights in America beyond those acquired by discovery, followed up by possession. But the King of Spain was too good a Catholic to have his right called in question, and when a heretic ship was caught among the West Indies, the avarice of priests and officials, and their holy horror at the approach of heresy to these regions, were exhibited in their dealings with the cargo and the unhappy crew. The inhuman treatment that the Spaniards inflicted upon honest traders aroused men to reprisals; and all ships venturing into these seas went fully armed. Private war was the natural consequence of Spanish cruelty and injustice; and the superior prowess of the Dutch and English soon made sad havoc with the plunder which the Spaniards had wrung from the natives for a hundred years and more.
The filibusters finally degenerated into pirates and robbers, and the treasure ships ("galleons") of Spain, and the towns upon her American coasts, were the victims of their depredations. The fury of the buccaneers was mainly directed against the monks, and when they sacked a town, they never failed to pay an especial visitation to the convents. When Vera Cruz was sacked they showed their contempt for the clergy by compelling the monks and nuns to carry the plunder of the town to their private boats; thereby grieving these "holy men" most of all, if we may believe the old chronicles, because they could have no share in the rich plunder loaded upon their own backs.
The second day after our arrival in Vera Cruz a fellow-passenger, who had been sick all the voyage, died of the yellow fever, which he had contracted at New Orleans, or on the Mississippi; which was probably the first time that a person ever died in Vera Cruz of vomito that had been contracted in the United States.
THE VOMITO.
This is a fitting place to speak of this disease and of its ravages, which we witnessed before leaving New Orleans. It was the time for the frosts to make their appearance when I left New York, and with the expectation of seeing the ground covered with this antidote to the fever, crowds were returning from the north, though the marks of the pestilence were still visible along our route. It had followed the main stream of travel far northward, and now, as we ventured upon its track, it seemed like traversing the valley of the shadow of death. Terror had committed greater ravages than the pestilence; the villages and cities on our route were half deserted; stagnation was visible in all commercial places; and when we reached New Orleans this strange state of things was doubly intensified: it looked more like a city of the dead, or a city depopulated, than the emporium of the Mississippi valley. A stranger might have supposed that a great funeral service had just been performed, in which all of the inhabitants remaining in town had acted the part of mourners. The city itself had been so thoroughly cleansed, that it might challenge comparison with one of the most cleanly villages of Holland, while its footways seemed almost too pure to be trod upon. Nothing appears half so gloomy as such a place when deserted of its principal inhabitants.
This disease was unknown in America until the opening of the African slave-trade. It is an African disease, intensified and aggravated by the rottenness and filthy habits of the human cargoes that brought it to America. It was entirely unknown at Vera Cruz until brought there in the slave-ship of 1699.[3] In like manner it was carried to all the West India islands. When the negro insurrection in San Domingo drove the white population into exile, the disease was carried by the immigrants to all the cities of the United States, and even to the most healthy localities in the interior of Massachusetts. Old people still remember when New York was so completely deserted that its principal streets were boarded up, and watchmen went their rounds of silent streets by day as well as by night. The fever of the present year can be traced directly to this accursed traffic. Slaves had been smuggled into Rio Janeiro, who brought the disease in its most virulent form from Africa. In that city it was carrying its hundreds to the grave, when a vessel cleared for New Orleans, having the disease on board. This vessel disseminated it in the upper wards of the city, while at the same time there arrived from Cuba another vessel which, from a like cause, had caught the vomito at Havana, and from this second vessel the disease was disseminated in the lower wards of New Orleans. It was the meeting of these two independent currents of the fever in the centre of the city, on Canal Street, that caused that fatal day on which three hundred victims went to their long homes. Such were the fruits of this offspring of an inhuman trade in a single city, in a single day.
FRIAR PAGE.
I learn from the preface of a book in the Spanish language, which I purchased at Mexico, entitled "The Voyages of Thomas Page," that a Dominican monk of that name, the brother of the Royalist Governor of Oxford under Charles I., was smuggled into Mexico by his Dominican brethren, against the King's order, which prohibited the entry of Englishmen into that country. As a missionary monk he resided in Mexico, or New Spain, as it was then called, eighteen years. On his return to England he published an account of the country which he visited, under the title of "A Survey of the West Indies." This being the first and last book ever written by a resident of New Spain that had not been submitted to the most rigid censorship by the Inquisition, it produced so profound a sensation, that, by order of the great Colbert, French Minister of State, it was expurgated and translated into French by an Irish Catholic of the name of O'Neil. From this expurgated French edition the Spanish copy now before me was translated. From this Spanish edition I had made the several translations that are found in this, and the following chapters. I have since found a black letter copy of the original, printed at London, in 1677; but I have concluded to use the translations, as furnishing a more official character to the picture therein drawn of the grossly immoral state of the clergy, and of the religious orders. As it is from actual observation, and has the sanction of the censorship, it must be of more value to my readers than any account of personal observations that I might write. This is my apology for copying the most interesting portions of a long forgotten book.
"When we came to land," says our author, "we saw all the inhabitants of the city (Vera Cruz) had congregated in the Plaza (public square) to receive us. The communities of monks were also there, each one preceded by a large crucifix. The Dominicans, the San Franciscans, the Mercedarios, and the Jesuits, 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 shore more expeditiously than did the Virey, the Marquis Seralvo, and his wife. Many of them (the monks) on stepping on shore kissed it, considering that it was a holy cause that brought them here—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[4] 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 magistrates of the town, and judges, who had descended from the capitol to receive him, besides the