As soon as the Atlante dropped anchor, even before their baggage was unloaded, Humboldt rushed ashore with his astronomical instruments to begin the measurements that would fix the port’s location. “On my trip to Acapulco,” he explains, “I was constantly engaged in improving the points of reckoning by observations of the sun and moon. Enormous errors in longitude caused by strong currents render navigation in the latitudes equally long and expensive.” He and Bonpland climbed up “naked rocks of strange appearance. They were scarcely sixty meters [about two hundred feet] above sea level, and appeared to be torn by the prolonged effects of the earthquakes so frequent on this coast.” (The city had been severely damaged by an earthquake in 1776, necessitating the rebuilding of el Fuerte de San Diego, the pentagonal stone fort guarding the harbor.) After several days of sightings, Humboldt confirmed his suspicion: Acapulco lay as much as five miles to the west of where some current charts had placed it. As a result, the maps of New Spain would be redrawn, to accommodate not just the port but all the other towns whose positions were fixed with relation to it.
Yet Humboldt had not come to Mexico intent on physical exploration. In 1800, the Spanish had ceded to France a huge tract of what had been New Spain, extending from the Rocky Mountains in the west to the Gulf of Mexico in the south. But a vast territory remained, including present-day Mexico and a great swath of land reaching from the current U.S. state of Texas all the way to northern California. At the time of Humboldt’s arrival, New Spain was a well-settled, prosperous colony, far different from the trackless Orinoco and Casiquiare. Though there was still some cartographic fine-tuning to be done in Mexico—such as fixing the exact location of Acapulco—the viceroyalty was already well mapped.
Humboldt had come to New Spain to secure passage to the Philippines, the next port of call on his projected round-the-world voyage. But he considered the viceroyalty much more than a way station en route to the Far East. Mexico had long been the crown jewel of Spain’s New World empire. By 1800, its population had swelled to nearly six million (compared to 7.25 million in the United States that year). With extensive deposits of silver and gold, as well as fertile agricultural lands, Mexico was contributing about six million pesos to the Spanish treasury annually—an incredible one fifth of the mother country’s yearly budget. And that figure didn’t even include millions of pesos in trade conducted between New Spain and Old.
To have spent all this time in America and not to have investigated Spain’s premier holding would have been unthinkable to Humboldt, whose curiosity ranged, beyond the natural sciences, to subjects as diverse as history, art, anthropology, and economics. Years before, when as a university student he had crossed Germany, Belgium, France, and England with Georg Forster, he had studied those countries’ architectural treasures, manufactories, and mines. Now he had an unprecedented opportunity to compare the development of New Spain to that of Europe, as well as the Spanish colonies to the south.
Arriving in Mexico, Humboldt “could not avoid being struck with the contrasts between the civilization of New Spain and the scanty cultivation of those parts of South America which had fallen under [his] notice.” In historic, prosperous Mexico, thanks to his royal passport, Humboldt was granted the access and cooperation needed to study the country’s economic and political organization with a thoroughness never before possible. With his passion for collecting and correlating data, he relished the opportunity to advance the world’s understanding of this important region. “This contrast [between New Spain and South America],” he continued, “excited me to a particular study of the statistics of Mexico, and to an investigation of the causes which have had the greatest influence on the progress of the population and national industry.” Whereas in South America he had focused primarily on the manifold connections within the natural world, here in Mexico Humboldt would concentrate on the complex relationships between the land and its people.
His geodesic measurements made, Humboldt didn’t linger in Acapulco. At the beginning of April, he, Bonpland, and Carlos Montúfar set out toward Mexico City, nearly two hundred miles to the north. After crossing the narrow coastal plain, the travelers plunged into the Sierra Madre del Sur, the rugged, geologically convoluted range that dominates the current Mexican states of Guerrero and Oaxaca. One of the most doggedly mountainous regions in all Mexico, the sierra is a complex jumble of temperate, forested peaks (some reaching over twelve thousand feet) and exceptionally hot and humid valleys, where Humboldt recorded temperatures as high as 104 degrees. Yet as the party pressed on, neither the demanding terrain nor the unbearable heat prevented him from taking exacting readings of geological features, latitude, and longitude.
Continuing his painstaking measurements all the way to Mexico City, Humboldt would incorporate this data into a unique visual cross-section of the territory that showed the locations of landforms as well as their height, thickness, and other distinguishing characteristics. Though a few such maps had been attempted in the past, none had ever been based on instrument readings, and Humboldt’s cross-section would be widely imitated in years to come. Even today, the technique is considered an indispensable tool of geological research, for its ability to synthesize a wealth of disparate data into an easily readable graphic presentation.
Not content to limit this geologic survey to the area between Acapulco and the capital, Humboldt would later draw on statistical archives in Mexico City and extend his cross-section all the way to 42 degrees north latitude, taking in the current U.S. states of Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado. For decades to come, this expanded map would form the basis for exploration in the southwestern United States, and it would be utilized by railroad surveyors as late as the 1850s. In fact, it was largely in recognition of this wealth of geographical data that early map-makers named so many places in the United States—rivers, counties, marshes, and cities—in Humboldt’s honor, including Humboldt County, California, and Humboldt Peak in Colorado.
As the travelers climbed up the coastal mountains toward Mexico City, they came to the town of Chilpancingo (“Place of the Wasps”), located on the Río Huacapa about fifty miles northeast of Acapulco, where they encountered pine and oak forests studded with lichens, ferns, and orchids, including dozens of species that grew nowhere else in the world. They also finally got a much-appreciated breath of cooler mountain air. About eighty miles north of Chilpancingo lay the celebrated town of Taxco, once site of the richest silver mine in the world. Built on a plunging hillside and traced by picturesque, twisting streets, Taxco had been founded in 1529 over an Aztec city known as Tlachco (“the Place of the Ball Game”). In 1531, the first Spanish mine in all of North America had been dug there—for tin. But silver had been unearthed instead, and by the end of the sixteenth century Taxco had been producing more of the precious metal than anyplace else in the New World. Gradually, the richest and most accessible veins had played out, the miners had moved on, and the city had entered a two-century decline—until 1716, when a Spaniard named José de la Borda had literally stumbled on another rich vein (according to legend, his horse exposed the gleaming ore when it kicked a rock). Tremendous wealth had once again flowed into Taxco, and the fortunate Borda had constructed houses, schools, roads, and a magnificent, gilded baroque church called the Templo de Santa Prisca.
At the time of Humboldt’s arrival, Taxco was no longer the world’s most productive silver vein (that honor had shifted to La Valenciana, outside Guanajuato), but the pits were still booming. Eager to get his first look at the famous Mexican mines, Humboldt settled into a nearby house along with Bonpland and Montúfar. At the time, Mexico was producing nearly two million pounds of silver a year—a staggering ten times as much as all the silver mines of Europe combined. There was no ignoring the importance of the precious metal, either to Mexico, where three quarters of the silver remained, or to Spain, whose economy had come to rely on the regular infusion of New World revenue. Yet Humboldt was surprised to discover that every hundred pounds of ore from the Mex
ican mines yielded only three or four ounces of silver. “It is not then, as has been too long believed, from the intrinsic wealth of the minerals,” he concluded, “but rather from the great abundance in which they are to be found in the bowels of the earth and the facility with which they can be wrought that the mines of America are to be distinguished from those of Europe.”
In his career as a mining inspector in Germany, Humboldt had introduced ingenious innovations for the safety and education of his men, and he noted with satisfaction that the Mexican miner was treated relatively well. While Indians had previously been enslaved and set to work in the pits under horrible conditions, by 1803, such work, whether by Indians or mestizos, was voluntary. Moreover, not only was the Mexican miner much better compensated than the average farm worker in New Spain, he was actually the best-paid miner in the world. Even so, not all workers were able to resist the temptation offered by the precious ores they handled. “Honesty is by no means so common among the Mexican as among the German or Swedish miners,” Humboldt noted, “and they make use of a thousand tricks to steal very rich minerals. As they are almost naked, and are searched on leaving the mine in the most indecent manner, they conceal small morsels of silver in their hair, under their armpits, and in their mouths, and they even lodge in their anus cylinders of clay which contain the metal. These cylinders are sometimes of the length of thirteen centimeters [five inches]. It is a most shocking spectacle,” he found, “to see hundreds of workmen, among whom there are a great number of very respectable men, searched on leaving the pit or gallery. A register is kept of the minerals found in the hair, in the mouth, or other parts of the miners’ bodies. In the mine of Valenciana the value of these stolen minerals amounted between 1774 and 1787 to the sum of 900,000 francs.”
Unlike Peru’s silver mines, those in New Spain did not seem to be in decline. Still, Humboldt saw numerous possibilities for improvement in their operation. “In taking a general view of the mineral wealth of New Spain,” he wrote, “far from being struck with the value of the actual produce, we are astonished that it is not much more considerable.” In fact, the mines’ productivity could be increased by as much as threefold, he believed, through a variety of technical improvements such as more judicious use of gunpowder in blasting, narrower shafts, improved communication between adjoining mines, and a more efficient means of drawing off groundwater. “But we must repeat here,” he added, “that changes can only take place very slowly among a people who are not fond of innovations, and in a country where the government possesses so little influence on the works which are generally the property of individuals, and not of shareholders. It is a prejudice to imagine that on account of their wealth the mines of New Spain do not require the same intelligence and economy which are necessary to the preservation of the mines of Saxony.”
Leaving Taxco, the travelers continued northeast toward Mexico City, till they came to the town of Cuernavaca. Once known by the Indian name Cuauhnáhuac (Place at the Edge of the Forest), the area had been an important agricultural center for centuries before the arrival of the Spanish. After his conquest of Mexico, Hernán Cortés had received Cuernavaca as part of his huge land grant from the Spanish Crown, and taking up residence, he had built Mexico’s first sugar mill there about 1530. Over the ensuing years, the town, with its pleasant, springlike climate, had become a popular retreat for the wealthy, including José de la Borda, the silver baron of Taxco, and later the emperor Maximilian. To this day Cuernavaca remains a fashionable though overcrowded retreat from nearby Mexico City.
From Cuernavaca, Humboldt and the others rode up a forested ridge, where they had their first glimpse of the green, cultivated Valle de Mexico, some seventy-five miles long and forty wide. After his first view of the valley, Cortés had written King Charles I calling it “a fairyland such as cannot be seen in Spain.” Three centuries later, the impression was scarcely muted. In the distance, Humboldt could make out Mexico City, now the capital of New Spain and before that the heart of the Aztec Empire. Just as he had been moved by the plight of the Inca in Peru, here in New Spain Humboldt would become fascinated by the history and culture of the Aztecs, who had been overrun and enslaved by the Spanish.
IN the days of the Aztecs, the teeming city in the valley was known as Tenochtitlán, or “the Place of the Cactus Fruit.” Located at more than seven thousand feet above sea level, nearly equidistant between the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, Tenochtitlán had been constructed on a 2,500-acre man-made island in the great lake of Texcoco. By A.D. 1500, not only was the city the greatest metropolis in the Western Hemisphere, with a quarter-million inhabitants, it was one of the largest cities in the world—twice as populous as London at the time and twenty times larger than Madrid. As capital of the Aztec civilization, the great city in the lake presided over a magnificent empire encompassing 125,000 square miles in central Mexico and nearly four hundred subject cities.
Like the rise of the Inca to the south, the Aztecs’ ascendancy had been relatively recent. About A.D. 1250, the nomadic Mexica people had migrated southward from northern Mexico. By 1325 they had founded their city on the lake where, according to legend, an eagle had been seen perching on a cactus. Then, around the middle of the fifteenth century, they had expanded rapidly, through a combination of diplomacy and conquest, and had established the vast empire today known as Aztec—a collective name for the Mexicas and numerous subject peoples linked by language, trade, religion, and other commonalities.
In 1502, Montezuma II (“He Who Angers Himself”), the son and great-grandson of previous emperors, had succeeded his uncle Ahuitzotl on the throne. Like the Inca, the Aztec emperor embodied both secular and religious authority. However, the Aztecs did not worship their king as a literal deity thought to be descended from the gods. The Aztec line of succession was not even strictly hereditary; the heir to the throne was chosen from within the royal family by a council of nobles, and was generally a brother, cousin, or some other close male relation of the deceased monarch.
Though the emperor had important religious duties, principal responsibility for Aztec worship fell to a class of priests, who wielded enormous political influence as well. Indeed, religion was central to the lives of all Aztecs, and it was no coincidence that the Great Temple at Tenochtitlán was constructed in the geographical middle of the city. Out of the pantheon of perhaps sixteen hundred Aztec gods (including two hundred major ones), the chief deity during the time of Montezuma II was Huitzilopochtli, god of the sun. According to the Aztecs’ apocalyptic mythology, they were living in the last of five eras of mankind’s existence on earth. Just as each previous epoch had concluded in cataclysm—wrought by wild animals, wind, fire, and floods—their own age was destined to end in devastating earthquakes, when horrible creatures would stalk the land. An Aztec song captures this sense of borrowed time and looming disaster:
Ponder this, eagle and jaguar knights,
Though you are carved in jade, you will break;
Though you are made of gold, you will crack;
Even though you are a quetzal feather, you will wither,
We are not forever on this earth;
Only for a time are we here.
Though they believed there would be no escaping this devastation, it was thought to be forestalled by Huitzilopochtli’s daily progress through the heavens. But to sustain him on his unceasing, life-giving rounds, the sun god demanded the nourishment of human blood. Emperors and priests regularly bled themselves from the ears, tongue, extremities, and penis, but these offerings alone were not sufficient. Huitzilopochtli’s great hunger could be sated only by human sacrifice on a huge scale, and great numbers of prisoners and slaves were ritually butchered for this purpose. When the new temple to Huitzilopochtli was consecrated in 1487, the lines of victims, estimated by various historians to number from twenty thousand to eighty thousand, were said to lead off toward all four compass points as far as the eye could see.
The conquistador Bernal Díaz del Cast
illo wrote an eyewitness account of the conquest of Mexico from the vantage of the common soldier. While the work shouldn’t be taken as the last word on the Conquest, it is a rousing tale of adventure. According to Díaz’s description of a typical Aztec sacrifice, the victim was held down on a stone block, and the chief priest would “strike open the wretched Indian’s chest with flint knives and hastily tear out the palpitating heart which, with the blood, they present to the idols in whose name they have performed the sacrifice. Then they cut off the arms, thighs, and head, eating the arms and thighs at their ceremonial banquets. The head they hang up on a beam, and the body of the sacrificed man is not eaten but given to the beasts of prey.”
In addition to religious observance, all other aspects of Aztec society were also regulated to their most minute detail. The duties of each class were carefully enumerated, and laws were stringent. Punishment was uncompromising; as with the Inca, public execution was the standard penalty for theft. Women were responsible for domestic chores such as weaving, while the men raised crops such as corn, beans, sweet potatoes, and chiles, and skilled craftsmen produced fine sculptures, paintings, metalwork, and ceramics.
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