The Aztec Treasure-House 26 – Janvier · Verses Across
Literature · Historical Fiction
The Aztec Treasure-House 26The Gold-Miners of Huitzilan
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Literature · Historical Fiction
The Aztec Treasure-House 26
The Gold-Miners of Huitzilan
JanvierEnglish
As we rounded a mountain spur that extended a long way out into the lake, a deep bay opened to us; which bay ran close in to the cliffs whereby the valley was surrounded, and was at no great distance from the Barred Pass, through which we had made our entry. At the foot of the bay, built partly upon the level land near the water-side, and partly upon the steep ascent beyond, was the town of Huitzilan--whereof the most curious feature that at first was noticeable was a tall chimney, whence thick black smoke was pouring forth, that rose above a stone building of great solidity and of a very considerable size.
On archæological grounds, the sight of this chimney greatly astonished me; and Rayburn, who was a very well-read man in all matters connected with his profession, was greatly astonished by it also; for the chimney obviously was a part of extensive reduction-works, and we both knew that such complete appliances for the smelting of metal, as seemed from this sign to exist here, were supposed to be the product of a high state of civilization in comparatively modern times. As for Young, he declared that the chimney gave him a regular jolt of homesickness; for, excepting that it was built of stone instead of brick, it might have been, for the look of it, transplanted hither directly from the region of the Back Bay. "I s'pose we'll be hearin' th' noon whistle next," he said, mournfully; and presently he added: "Do you know, Professor, I b'lieve I'm beginnin' t' see daylight in all this tall talk you say th' Colonel has been givin' us about th' 'rebellions,' as he calls 'em, that go on here. He don't mean t' close our eyes up, th' Colonel don't, for he's a first-class gentleman; but, bein' born an' bred a heathen, he don't know any better. What he's tryin' t' tell us about, an' can't, because he don't know th' English for it, is strikes. That's what's th' matter. Miners are bound t' go on strikes. It's their nature, an' they can't help it. That chimbly gives th' whole thing away. You just tell th' Colonel that we've got down t' th' hard-pan an' really know what he's been drivin' at. An' t' think of there bein' strikes in Mexico! I didn't b'lieve that a Greaser had backbone enough, or ambition enough, t' strike at anything!"
However, as I had no great amount of faith in Young's theory, I did not attempt to translate to Tizoc what he had said to me; nor was there any opportunity for further talk at that time. Already the foremost boats of the flotilla had made a landing at a well-built pier that extended from the shore into deep water; and a minute or two later our boat also pulled in to the pier, and we disembarked. The general view of the town that I then had showed me that it was closely built over an area rather more than half a mile square; that the houses for the most part were mere hovels, of which the largest could not contain more than two small rooms; and that the few houses of a better sort were within the strong stone wall by which the reduction-works also were enclosed. At the pier where we landed a boat was in process of lading with bars of gold for transport to the Treasure-house in the city; and I thought that I never had seen anywhere more savage-looking fellows than the almost naked laborers by whom the work of lading was carried on. Physically these men were magnificent creatures--tall and well-shaped and vigorous, and the ease with which they handled the great bars of gold showed how enormous must be their strength. But so full of venomous hate were the sullen looks which they cast upon us, and so savage was the effect of their coarse, dishevelled hair falling down over and partly veiling their great glittering eyes, whence these angry glances were shot forth at us like poisoned darts, that I was thankful to see that, all told, there were not more than a dozen of them, and that three times as many heavily armed soldiers served as their guard. And looking at these creatures, who were truly less like men than dangerous wild beasts, I could not wonder at the grave concern which Tizoc had manifested at thought of the risk which we ran in taking them for allies. "It's as easy t' start 'em," Young said, when he came to an understanding of the situation, "as 'tis t' start a freight-train down a three per cent. grade. But what I want to know is, when we want 'em t' stop, how in th' h--ll are we ever goin' t' set th' brakes?"
Yet, dangerous to ourselves though the use of it must be, our hopes of success rested mainly upon our ability to control and to employ effectively this savage material. Fortunately, it was not the whole of our reliance; and it was our intention to leaven this dangerous lump with the very considerable number of trained and trustworthy soldiers that we had available as the substantial nucleus of our fighting force, and also with the larger body of both slaves and freemen--not regularly drilled soldiers, to be sure, yet many of them trained in the ways of war--that we counted upon to join us from among the people at large.
This outline of the plan of action that the Council had determined upon was exhibited to us by Tizoc during our passage down the lake; and I was glad to find that Rayburn--for whose judgment I had much respect in such matters--was disposed to think well of it.
"If I expected to stay here, Professor, after the row was over," he said, "I mightn't be quite as well satisfied with this plan of theirs for running things. The war part of the programme is all right. They won't have any difficulty in getting their Tlahuicos to fight anything in the way of an army that the Priest Captain shows up with. Fighting is just what will please them more than anything else. Where the trouble is going to come in is when the fighting is over and they go in for reconstruction. It's one thing to make fighters out of this sort of stuff, but it's quite another thing to make respectable citizens out of it. That's where the hitch will be. But as we don't intend to settle down in this valley--unless we find that there's no way out of it--we needn't bother about that part of the performance at all. That's their funeral, not ours. So, for my part, the sooner they get their army in shape, and get the fighting part settled, the better I'll be satisfied."
To do the members of the Council justice, they seemed to be even more eager than Rayburn was to forward the work that they had in hand. From the pier they went directly to the enclosure in the centre of the town, within which was the building ordinarily occupied by the commandant of the post and by the officials of the civil government; and in this place, Tizoc informed us, they intended immediately to organize the new government, and then to proceed with all possible despatch to make arrangements for placing an army in the field.
In Tizoc's company, but more leisurely, we also went on to the Citadel--as we found the enclosure about the smelting-works was called--where comfortable quarters had been provided for us in the same building wherein the Council was housed. Here we waited, in somewhat strained idleness, while the Council carried on, in a chamber not far removed from us, its exciting work of destroying a government that had endured for more than a thousand years; and we were mightily surprised, knowing how prodigious was the change that then was being wrought in ancient institutions, by observing how quietly it all went on. The murmur of talk that came to us, unchecked by any intervening doors, had no sound of excitement or of anger or of violent emotion of any sort; and I could not but hold in admiration the calm, self-contained natures of these men who thus equably and rationally could deal with such vastly weighty affairs.
While this great matter--which could end only in wild commotion and fierce battling--went forward in this quiet way, Tizoc opened to us much that was of curious interest touching the near-by gold-mine and they who mined the gold. Of the existence of the mine, he said, the Aztlanecas had remained ignorant for many generations after their coming into the valley; and for many more generations but little gold had been taken from it, because the metal was of no value to his people save for the making of ornaments. But when the process had been discovered by which this metal could be hardened, and so made serviceable for all manner of useful purposes--and this the more because, by the manufacture that then ensued of tools wherewith the rock could be easily worked, mining in a large way became possible--the development of the mine upon a great scale had been begun, and had been continued upon a constantly increasing scale from that time onward. All the earth beneath where we then were, he said, was honey-combed with passages which followed the several veins; and of these there seemed to be no end at all, for ever as each vein was exhausted another not less rich was found--and thus it seemed as though all the substructure of that great mountain range were one huge mass of gold.
What the measures of weight were with which he estimated the annual output of the mine, I could not clearly understand, but the matter was made approximately plain to us by his statement that the daily product of the mine never was less than one of the great bars of gold that we had seen upon the pier in process of carriage to the Treasure-house; and that sometimes, when veins of extraordinary richness were encountered, even so much as four of these bars had been smelted from the ore that the mine yielded in a single day.
"Those bars don't weigh an ounce less than two hundred pounds apiece," Rayburn said, when I had translated to him what Tizoc had told me. "That makes the output of the mine not less than three tons a month, and, in a rough way, a ton of gold is worth just about half a million of dollars. If the Colonel isn't mixed in his figures, and if you've translated him straight, Professor, these fellows are taking out somewheres in the neighborhood of twenty millions a year."
Young gave a long whistle. "Great Scott!" he exclaimed, "that just is an all-fired big pile of money t' be wasted on a lot of barelegged heathen critters like these, who don't know th' Ten Commandments by sight, an' who've never even heard of a cocktail! D' you know what I'm goin' t' do, Rayburn, when I realize on this investment? I'm goin' t' buy th' Old Colony Railroad, just for th' sake of bein' able t' bounce th' Superintendent. He bounced me after that freight smash-up--and it wasn't my fault that th' operator got mixed an' gave me th' wrong orders--and I'll give him a taste o' th' same kind. Won't it just paralyze him when he gets his orders t' quit, signed 'Seth Young, President,' an' finds out it's th' same old Seth Young who used t' run Thirty-two on th' Fall River division?"
"Hadn't you better let him down easy by telegraphing him right now to begin to look out for a new place?" Rayburn asked. "We'll wait for you here, while you step over to the Western Union office"--which cool comment upon Young's enthusiastic discounting of a bright future brought the gloomy present so clearly before his mind that his castle-building ended suddenly, and he lapsed into silence.
But great though our wonder was at the prodigious quantity of precious metal that this mine yielded in each year, and amazed though we were by thought of the vast store of treasure that the valley now must hold, I, for my part, felt a far deeper interest in what Tizoc went on to tell us concerning the men by whose toil the treasure had been accumulated. And, truly, so bitter and so dreary was the life of the Tlahuicos who were forced to labor here unceasingly, and through so long a period had they been thus cruelly dealt with, that it seemed to me there must rest upon all the Valley of Aztlan a heavy curse that only some signal act of expiation could remove. And the coincidence struck me as most curious that here among the Aztecs, wrought by themselves upon the men of their own race, should be found identically the same cruelties which the Spaniards practised upon the Indians whom they enslaved as miners in New Mexico: whereof came that fierce outburst of revolt two hundred years ago, when the Pueblos ravaged with sword and flame the whole valley of the Rio Grande from Taos to the Pass of the North.
There was small ground for wonder that the Tlahuicos, thus crushed by over-heavy labor, and dealt with as though they were not men, but fierce and dangerous brutes, should cherish at all times in their breasts a sullen fire of mutiny; nor that on every occasion at all favorable to their purposes there should spring forth from the glowing embers of their hatred a vivid and consuming flame. Only by the strength and the vigilance of the guard that constantly was maintained over them was their tendency to rebellion held in check; and even the guards could not prevent frequent outbreaks--which ended only in the cruel slaughter of all concerned in them--so passionately eager was the longing of these desperate creatures for revenge.
Only once, a vastly long while past, Tizoc said, had success attended an effort on the part of the Tlahuicos to release themselves from their cruel slavery, and that they then eluded the vigilance of their masters was due to their employment of strategy against force. The whole matter, he continued, was now but a half-remembered tradition, yet the main details of it were clear. In that far-back time a vein of extraordinary richness had been followed for a very long distance in the direction of the Barred Pass; and, as the event proved, the gallery was carried beyond the bars, passing far beneath them, and so went onward, steadily rising, until an outlet was had into the cañon. That the secret of this outlet might be kept among the men who had opened it, these slew the guard that watched over them and thrust his body out into the cañon, thus most effectually placing it beyond the reach of the search that would be made for it; and the opening that they had made they closed carefully, and continued a little way onward into the rock the gallery in which they were working: so that the superintendent of the mine might see clearly (what, indeed, was the truth) that the vein of ore had been followed to its end.
Tizoc knew not how long a time passed before the Tlahuicos made use of the way of escape thus opened to them; but their flight could not have been taken hastily, because it included a very great number of them, and included also carrying with them large quantities of arms for warfare, and of useful household stores. He could say certainly no more than that when all their well-laid plan was ready to be executed, they rose against the soldiers which guarded them with such suddenness and brave violence that they succeeded in seizing and in holding the Citadel; which gave no chance for grave uneasiness, for the officers of the force thus for a moment driven off thought that because of their retiring within so narrow a place they speedily must surrender for dread of being starved there; and it was held to be but a sign of their still greater simplicity--since thus would there be more hungry mouths to fill--that they carried their women and children with them into the stronghold where they lay besieged.
But so strange was the desolate silence that hung over the place into which so great a multitude had retired, that the besiegers presently were moved by it to a wonder wherein was a strong feeling of awe; and still greater was the marvel that they had to ponder upon when, at last, meeting with no opposition, they broke in the grating that barred the entrance to the Citadel, and found within the enclosure not one single living soul! And so cleverly had the fugitives closed the way behind them that a long while passed before it was known certainly what had become of this living host that, as it seemed, in a moment had vanished from off the face of the earth. More than half a lifetime went by without the shedding of light upon this mystery; and it seemed as though a ghost had risen when one day a very aged man came forth from that long-abandoned passage in the mine and surrendered himself to the first of the guards whom he encountered--and then told that he was a priest whom the fleeing rebels had carried captive with them, and whom they had held a prisoner through all these many years. And he told also how the rebels had made their home in a certain fair valley that was shut in and hidden among the mountains; and how that they had built a great city--resting fearless in the conviction that they were safe from harm. By the heavy toil that had been needful to open anew the way into the mine from the cañon, the little remnant of strength in this old man's body had been exhausted; and presently, having told his story, he died.
Then it was that the Priest Captain and the Council who ruled in that ancient time, having assured themselves by the sending out of spies that all which the old man had told them was true, planned to bring upon the rebels a very terrible vengeance; which was to drown them all in their city by letting loose upon them the waters of a mighty lake. And this plan, though its accomplishment was not arrived at until two full cycles had passed away, so mighty was the labor that it involved, at last was executed: and in one single day every living creature in all that valley was overwhelmed by the flood let loose into it; and where so great a mass of teeming life had been there remained thereafter only the desolate silence and stillness of universal death.
It was with long-drawn breaths that Fray Antonio and I listened to Tizoc's telling of this tradition, which in many ways was far more real to us than it possibly could be to him; for we but lately had passed through that death-stricken valley--and ourselves had been like to die there--and every feature of the scene, that he could but vaguely describe to us, we had clearly in our minds. And thus we came to know the full meaning of the great catastrophe whereof we had seen the outworking, both in the destruction wrought by it and the way of its accomplishment, but of which we had divined no more concerning its cause than that in some way it must have resulted from a slowly worked-out vengeance prompted by a most malignant hate.
