Captain Edward Cooke embarked on a marauding voyage around
the world that began in 1708 and lasted three years. The voyage was made up of
two ships sent out by Bristol merchants. Cooke commanded the ship called the
Duchess, whilst William Dampier, a renowned seafarer who completed three
circumnavigations in his lifetime, commanded the Duke with Woodes Rogers.
Cooke’s account of the voyage was published in two volumes, titled A Voyage to the South Sea and Around the
World Perform’d in the Years 1708, 1709, 1710, and 1711, copies of which
are held in Worcester Cathedral library.
After travelling from Bristol to the Coast of Brazil, then
onto Peru and the Galapagos Islands, the Duke and Duchess continued Northwards
from Panama along the northern part of South America. Cooke describes how this
area of land was divided into “the Tierre Firme, or the continent, the next to
the Equinoctial, being the very narrow Isthmus, or neck of land, which joins
the North and South parts of that vast part of the world, next Veragua, then
Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Vera Paz, Chippa, Soconusco,
Tabasco, Yucatan, Guaxaca, Tlascala, Or Los Angeles, Mexico, properly so
call’d, Mechoaca, Panuco, Xalisco, Guadalajara, Zacatecas, New Biscay,
Culiacan, Cinaloa, the vast province of New Mexico, and the Island of
California.” (p. 835)
Cooke gives a short summary of each of the places but
devotes most time to describing the layout and customs of the peoples of Mexico
City. Cooke uses the account of the Italian traveller Gemelli Careri who visited Mexico City over a decade
earlier in 1693. Cooke (quoting Gemelli) describes Mexico favourably: “The plan
of it is square with long, wide, and well pav’d streets, lying east, west,
north and south, in straight lines, like a chess board. Few cities in Italy
exceed it for beautiful structures and none come near it for fine women”.
The below map was created by Gemelli and is taken from
another travel book from Worcester Cathedral library, Harris’ Collection of Voyages and Travels (1745).
It shows Mexico City as Gemelli and Cooke encountered it in the late
seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The twentieth century has seen the
city of Mexico rapidly expand westward and, since 1900 its population has
increased from 500,000 to over 8 million. Today the lakes of Chalco (South of
the Lake of Mexico), Xal and Nuebo are covered by the sprawling city. As the
map is hydrographical it is mainly concerned with recording the lakes and
waterways surrounding Mexico City. Yet from it we can nonetheless get an
impression of how “five causeways half a league long, lead into the city, which
has neither walls nor gates".
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| Photograph of a "hydrographicall draught of Mexico as it lies in its lakes", Harris' Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV (1745), p.487. Image copyright the Chapter of Worcester Cathedral, U.K. (2014). |
Like all travel accounts, we cannot be certain of the
statistics that Cooke records about Mexico City’s population and he is often
very opinionated. He claims that around one million live in the city itself and
that of this figure a large proportion of people were racially mixed, “the
greater number blacks and mulattos” (Cooke, p. 396). Cooke’s statement simplifies the complex and extremely diverse social demography of Mexico City
in this period. African slaves had begun to be imported into New Spain because
the introduction of the New Laws in the seventeenth century prohibited the
enslavement of the indigenous peoples. Between the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, Mexico became increasingly ethnically diverse and there were many
groups of mixed-racial identity created from the blending of European, African,
and Indian cultures.
Mexico City was also surrounded by smaller towns or pueblos
(as seen on the map) that were made-up almost entirely of Indians. If you want
to learn more about the demography of Mexico City in this period this link
provides a good overview and some useful statistical historic research http://www.hist.umn.edu/~rmccaa/mxpoprev/cambridg3.htm
Cooke’s figure of five million indigenous people living in
the towns surrounding Mexico city is undoubtedly inaccurate. In the seventeenth
century, the indigenous population had begun to recover from small pox and
other infections and the number of Indigenous people had increased by as much
as 30% throughout the later seventeenth century; Cooke’s figure probably
exaggerates the population growth. Many of Cooke’s observations are, however,
accurate. For example, he notes how brass coinage was not used in Mexico at
this time, only silver. He also comments that in the city’s markets, you can
trade the cacao bean as a form of currency. He says that “in the market cacao
nuts pass for honey in the buying of Herbs, 60 or 80 of them passing for a
Royal, as the Price of those nuts is higher or lower”. Cacao beans along with
textiles were transported into the city during this period from southern Mexico
and were eagerly sought after.
After his description of Mexico City, Cooke talks of
Acapulco which he is altogether less impressed by! He complains that the
conditions are “very unhealthy from November till May because then there falls
no ran, and therefore is hotter in January than Italy in the Dog-Days.” (Cooke
p. 397). He also complains that there is a lack of inns for travellers to stay
in, stating that “Spanish Merchants, as soon as the Ships from Manila and Peru
are discharg’d, all retire to oher places”. Acapulco was a busy port in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and was where all the major goods from
China and the Philippines were brought to by ship and then transported onwards
to Mexico City by the Manila galleons. The city was predominantly made-up of African
migrants and slaves, who worked at the port.
Cooke’s A Voyage to
the South Sea and Around the World Perform’d in the Years 1708, 1709, 1710, and
1711 is a useful and engaging read for anyone who is interested in the
history of Mexico and surrounding countries (Guatamala, Panama and so on). It
gives an idea of how one English traveller perceived these places in the early
1700s. As I have suggested, however, we should not necessarily take everything Cooke
records as fact. Cooke often relies heavily on the accounts of
voyagers that have gone before him and can also be prone to using hyperbole (because
he wants readers to find his travels exciting). One can also be frustrated over
the amount of time Cooke spends relaying the history of each place, much
narrative is concerned with past events instead of present circumstances. This
said, there are some very detailed descriptions of the silver mines and other
aspects of local economies.
After venturing along the neck of land connecting Northern
and Southern America, Cooke and his group departed from the “island” of
California to return for England on January 10 1709. After they reached the
Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) their journey to Texel (North Holland) took
three months and seventeen days.
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