CHAPTER III.

FIRST DAYS AT MEXICO.

A DARK wet night for arriving in a strange city forbids all chance of imbibing a first general impression of its aspect on driving into it; and this was the case with me on arriving at Mexico. The hotel "Iturbide" being the house I was recommended to, I ordered the coachman to drive me there, and a quarter of an hour's jolting brought me to a large entrance opening into a court-yard with a covered colonnade on two sides of it.

There was no porter to await guests; I saw only a few loungers, one of whom directed me to the farther left-hand corner of the quadrangle, or courtyard, for the dull bureau or despacho of the hotel. Thither I walked, the coachman following with such luggage as I had brought with me, for I had left portmanteaux and keys with a smart young gentleman on the railway with "Express" marked on his hat, who was to pass them through the octroi.

On applying for a room I was conducted up a cold looking, double stone staircase into a lofty

corridor, running round the quadrangle, and shown into a rather large-sized front room, not very luxuriously furnished, which I took for a term at two dollars, or eight shillings, a day, linen and lights included; the single-day charge being three dollars.

The boarding arrangements were separate, and the dining-room, on entering which you passed the kitchen doorway, was to be found downstairs at the corner of an inner and smaller court. I was not over-critical for the first night, but I thought there was a cold and out-of-repair look throughout, and the hotel inspired me with no anticipations of a very brilliant city. After dining, I found to my annoyance that my portmanteaux had arrived, and had been taken in without the keys, nor could it be explained to me how the oversight of thus receiving them had happened; and this I again took as interpreting that brains were not yet very active in Mexico. However, late at night "Express" appeared with the keys, and, a thousand apologies besides. New systems are only dawning here as yet.

When I opened my window in the morning I found it looked out into the calle (or street) San Francisco. This street is the principal one in Mexico, and runs in a straight line from the Alameda, or public gardens planted with trees, to the great Plaza, where the cathedral stands. On coming downstairs I took a survey of the hotel, which I found to be of a somewhat pretentious character, though somewhat tawdry

in general effect. Its name gives it an interest. It is, as I have said, a large building with a quadrangle, or court-yard, and contains two main storeys, the entrance and windows being adorned with red zig-zag stone or stucco patterns. In its present state it contains a large café and billiard-room, occupying the whole length of the right-hand side as you enter. On the opposite side, under the colonnade, the Americans, who are now trickling into the country, with every indication of soon beginning to pour into it, have managed to get partitioned off a long sitting-room, with pianoforte, chairs, and tables. In the inner and smaller courtyard there are baths, not very luxurious, nor in very good repair, and the water of which, after rain, is often stained with earth. The restaurant is a long dull room, looking out, with three windows opening to the ground, on a small untidy garden with one or two trees, and a sort of pavilion for dining. The roof of the hotel is, like those of all other houses in Mexico, flat. These flat roofs are called "azoteas," and a fine view is obtained from this and from many of them.

As regards the eating and drinking, I can give it no good character. The meat and mode of serving it are very poor, and the wine, imported from France, is very dear and very ordinary. Four shillings will procure you only what is bottled in Mexico; and it is far from being of a quality that would have inspired an ode from Horace.

E

Such are the present destinies and attractions of the Iturbide, the name of which, as I have said, is attractive, for it is historical. This same hotel was once the palace of the ill-starred Don Agustin de Iturbide, whose attempt to establish a first empire was shorter than was that to establish a second, and whose ultimate fate was as tragical as Maximilian's. This unhappy individual, who appears to have taken death as a matter of course when it came, was one of the main instruments in bringing about the independence of Mexico, which was declared free by the Treaty of Cordova in 1821, under the limited monarchy of Don Ferdinand VII., then King of Spain. Spain, however, rejected this treaty, and eventually, on the 27th of September, 1821, the Army of the Three Guarantees, "Religion, Union, and Independence," with sixteen thousand men and sixty-eight pieces of artillery, entered the capital and declared absolute Independence.

A regency was proclaimed of five persons, of whom Iturbide formed one, with Don Juan O'Donoju, the last of the sixty-four viceroys whom Spain had sent, since Cortés had planted—and watered-the Cross. So far so good, and the Mexican state, as then constituted, extended from Guatemala to Texas, the Californias and New Mexico. But the political volcanoes of the country again broke forth. Congress was installed, for example, on the 24th February, 1822the exact date of the month, by the way, of the latest

overthrow of the monarchy in France-and on the 18th of May following a pronunciamiento, i.e. a coup d'état, or a revolution, took place in Mexico, and, lo! Don Agostin Iturbide was declared Emperor as Agostin I., and solemnly crowned in the cathedral on the 21st of June, 1822.

Congress disapproving of all this, the easy and decisive step was taken of dissolving that assembly on the 30th of October. But the volcano again broke forth in the eruption of the famous Santa Anna, who proclaimed a republic at Vera Cruz on the 6th December. Iturbide here showed no "vacillations." He decided to abdicate, which step he took on the 20th of March, 1823, and on the 11th of May following fled to England with his family. But in an evil hour-and this fact may have borne its fruits in 1867

-he took it into his head to return. On the 4th of July, 1824, he re-appeared, and landed at Soto la Marina, a port between Tampico and Matamoras, being apparently unaware of a decree by which he had been outlawed. Detected, imprisoned, and condemned, he was summarily shot upon the 19th of the same month, against the church wall at Padilla. Such was the career and such the fate of the man who once occupied this hotel as a palace.

In walking out into the street after breakfast, I fell in with a fellow-lodger, a Mr. West, who opened conversation with me, and whom I straightway knew to be what we call, by way of distinction (for under