WILSON'S MEXICO. * WrLsoN is an American who has practised as
a lawyer in California, and travelled a good deal in -Mexico. His volume is not a regular narrative of his travels, but an olla podrida, in which descriptions of the scenery, stories of adventures, very often at second-hand, and observations upon the country and people, are mixed up with a variety of other matter. Mr. Wilson has got hold of a black-letter volume, written by an English Dominican, who in the times of Charles the First of England had travelled through Mexico in company with some other European monks, and was much scandalized at the loose conduct of the Mexican clergy. As our author is a strong Protestant, he quotes largely from this book, and adds various tales of a modern date. He writes a life of Santa Anna ; but, instead of going through the biography at once, he connects it with localities. The neigh- bourhood of the General's birthplace suggests the commence- ment; which is suspended at an appropriate point, till the traveller reaches a place that recalls another turning-point in his hero's career, and so on. There is a good deal about mines, and a rather suspicious-looking announcement of " the inexhaustible supplies of silver in Northern Mexico near the route of our proposed Pacific railroad." Mr. Wilson is of opinion that the yellow fever is quite independent of climate, and that it originated in the crowded and filthy state of the slave-ships. He considers it a means of punish- ing people who are connected with the traffic ; as he endeavours to show by tracing the course of some of its outbreaks. The most striking of his theories, and the only one indeed which redeems the volume from something like worthlessness (unless his short ac- count of law in California be excepted,) is his view of the conquest of Mexico by Cortes. We do not say that A is worth while to read Mr. Wilson's mélange for the purpose of bringing together all his facts and arguments except for an historical student—and to exhibit them in their entirety would occupy a pamphlet ; but the theory and its arguments may be briefly stated thus. From the total absence of all remains of such works or edifices as Cortes describes, the difficulty of producing food for the number of people he places in particular localities, and the impossibility, from the physical features of the Mexican valley, of such things existing as he represents, Mr. Wilson infers that the despatches of Cortes are grossly exaggerated as regards the numbers and power of the Aztecs, and more especially in the accounts of the advanced civilization, and what a modern economist would call the realized capital of the country, in buildings, canals, roads, 8re. The Aztecs he holds to have been Red Indians, who had invaded the country from the North, and still further destroyed such declining civiliza- tion as they found. The lakes, the causeways, the buildings, and other warlike obstacles to the conquest of the city of Mexico, were gross exaggerations—indeed, to a great extent imaginary though founded on fact. The object of Cortes was to impress the Emperor Charles the Fifth with a great idea of the conquest and of his own valour and conduct. When fuller knowledge overthrew the romances of Cortes, either Charles and his Ministers still be- lieved the story, or deemed it better that the world should be- lieve it. All contradiction was therefore interdicted, and this was
easily effected by means of the censorship and the Inquisition.
"In Spain the censorship was not only repressive, but it was suggestive.' It not only suppressed the writings of authors, but compelled them to father productions that were the very opposite of those they wished to publish. Take the ease of poor Sahagun, who wrote a refutation of the historian of the Conquest, under the pretence of giving the Indian account of that event: when his book was finally allowed to see the light, after a delay of many years, it was found that his own account of the conquest had been sup- Mexico and its Religion; with Incidents of Travel in that country during parts of the years 1851-'52-'53-'54; and Historical Notices of Events connected with Places visited. By Robert A, WilSon. Published by Low and Co., London; and Harper, New York, pressed, and the regular Spanish account had been substituted. Of Las Casas's 'Apology for the Indiana,' which had occupied thirty-two years of his life, that part only was allowed to appear which treated of Saint Do- mingo. But his refutation of the histories of the conquest of Mexico is wholly suppressed. To have proved the Conquistadors a gang of unprin- cipled buccaneers would have spoiled a holy war, which was just what the Inquisition would not allow to go before the world. To the little work of Boturini on Mexico there are appended-1. The declaration of his faith in the Roman Catholic Church in the most unequivocal terms. 2. The licence ot the Jesuit father. 3. The licence of an Inquisitor. 4. The licence of the Judge of the Supreme Council of the Indies. 5. The licence of the Royal Council of the India' s. 6. The approbation of the Qualificator ' of the In- quisition, who was a barefooted Carmelite monk. 7. The licence of the Royal Council of Castle. Beyond all this, the writer must be a person In holy orders, and be a person of sufficient influence to obtain the favourable notice of all these bodies, who were instinctively hostile to the diffusion of all information, particularly in regard to the New World. Nor was this the end of the difficulty • the licence of any one of these officials could be re- voked at pleasufe, and, when republished, the work had to be re-‘r laid.'
• • •
"With Buell facts before Us, it is safe to declare that not a single state- ment of fact that affected either the interests of the King or the Church was ever pliblished in Spain or her colonies during the three hundred years of the existence of the Inquisition ; but everything published was modified to suit the wishes of the censors, without any regard to the sentiments of the pu- tative author."
The facts on which Mr. Wilson grounds his conclusions are nu- merous; the cogency of his arguments must rest upon the %g- reatness of his observations, as well as upon the accuracy of his inductions. A sample of his method may be taken from his ac- count of Cholula, the spot which first induced his scepticism ; for up to the time of his visit he had been an implicit believer in the "elegantly written" story. "At the base of this pyramid, three hundred years ago, flourished the rich and opulent city of Cholula, which, according to Cort5z, contained 40,000 houses. Re says that he counted from this spot 400 mosques, and 400 towers of other mosques—that the 'exterior of this city is more beautiful than any in Spain. That is' as he and all other historians of the Conquest agree in representing it, it was at the same time not only the Mecca and the commercial centre, but the centre of learning and refinement
of Mexico. * * "This is the poetry of the thing. Let us give it a little matter-of-fact examination.
"The spot on which I stand, instead of being what it has often been re- presented to be, is but a shapeless mass of earth 205 feet high, occupying a village square of 1810 feet. It is sufficiently wasted by time to give full scope to the imagination to fill out or restore it to almost any form. One hundred years ago, some rich citizen constructed steps up its side, and pro- tected the sides of his steps from falling earth by walls of adobe, or mud- brick ; and on the West side some adobe buttresses have been placed to keep the loose earth out of the village street. This is all of man's labour that is visible, except the work of the Indians in shaving away the hill which con- stitutes this pyramid. As for the great city of Cholula, it never had an existence ; for if there had been only three hundred years ago such a city here, composed of 40,000 houses, with 400 towers, besides the 400 mosques, then some vestige or fragment of a fallen wall or a ruined tower would still be visible. But I searched in vain for the slightest evidence of former mag- nificence, and was driven to the unwelcome conclusion that the whole city was fabricated out of some miserable Indian village, inferior, perhaps, to the present town of one-story whitewashed mud huts."
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