d

The description of the Mexican market, which we have given from Cortez, relates to the market of Tlatelolco.

What is now called the Barrio of Santiago composes but a part of the ancient Tlatelolco. We proceed for more than an hour on the road to Tanepantla and Ahuahuetes, among the ruins of the old city. We perceive there, as well as on the road to Tacuba and Iztapalapan, how much the Mexico rebuilt by Cortez is smaller than Tenochtitlan under the last of the Montezumas. The enormous magnitude of the market-place of Tlatelolco, of which the boundaries are still discernible, proves the great population of the ancient city. The Indians show in this same market-plaee an elevation surrounded by walls. It was one of the Mexican theatres, the same on which Cortez, a few days before the end of the siege, erected his famous Catapulta (trabuco de palo*), the appearance of which alone terrified the besieged; for the machine was incapable of being used from the awkwardness of the artillerymen. This elevation is now included in the porch of the chapel of Santiago.

The city of Tenochtitlan was divided into four quarters, called Teopan, or Xochimilca, Atzacúalco, Moyotla, and Tlaguechiuchan, or Cuepopan. The old division is still preserved in the

* Lorenzana, p. 289.

limits assigned to the quarters of St. Paul, St. Sebastian, St. John, and St. Mary; and the present streets have for the most part the same direction as the old ones, nearly from north to south, and from east to west.* But what gives the new city, as we have already observed, a peculiar and distinctive character, is, that it is situated entirely on the continent, between the extremities of the two lakes of Tezcuco and Xochimilco, and that it only receives, by means of navigable canals, the fresh water of the Xochimilco.

Many circumstances have contributed to this new order of things. The part of the salt-water lake between the southern and western dikes was always the shallowest. Cortez complained that his flotilla, the brigantines which he constructed at Tezcuco, could not, notwithstanding the openings in the dikes, make the circuit of the besieged city. Sheets of water of small depth became insensibly marshes, which, when intersected with trenches or small defluous canals, were converted into chinampas and arable land. The lake of Tezcuco, which Valmont de Bomaret

* Properly from the S. 16° W. to N. 74° E. at least towards the convent of Saint Angustin, where I took my azimuths. The direction of the old streets was undoubtedly determined by that of the principal dikes. Now, from the position of the places were these dikes appear to have terminated, it is very improbable that they represented exactly meridians and parallels.

+ Dictionnaire d'Histoire Naturelle, article Lac.

supposed to communicate with the ocean, though it is at an elevation of 2277 metres*, has no particular sources, like the lake of Chalco. When we consider, on the one hand, the small volume of water with which in dry seasons this lake is furnished by very inconsiderable rivers, and, on the other, the enormous rapidity of evaporation in the table-land of Mexico, of which I have made repeated experiments, we must admit, what geological observations appear also to confirm, that for centuries the want of equilibrium between the water lost by evaporation, and the mass of water flowing in, has progressively circumscribed the lake of Tezcuco within more narrow limits. We learn from the Mexican annalst, that in the reign of King Ahuizotl, this salt-water lake experienced such a want of water as to interrupt navigation; and that to obviate this evil, and to increase its supplies, an aqueduct was constructed from Coyohuacan to Tenochtitlan. This aqueduct brought the sources of Huitzilopochco to several canals of the city which were dried up.

This diminution of water, experienced before the arrival of the Spaniards, would no doubt have been very slow and very insensible, if the hand of man, since the period of the conquest, had not contributed to reverse the order of na

*7468 feet. Trans.

+ Paintings preserved in the Vatican, and testimony of Father Acosta.

ture. Those who have travelled in the peninsula know how much, even in Europe, the Spaniards hate all plantations which yield a shade round towns or villages. It would appear that the first conquerors wished the beautiful valley of Tenochtitlan to resemble the Castilian soil, which is dry and destitute of vegetation. Since the sixteenth century they have inconsiderately cut, not only the trees of the plain in which the capital is situated, but those on the mountains which surround it. The construction of the new city, begun in 1524, required a great quantity of timber for building and piles. They destroyed, and they daily destroy, without planting any thing in its stead, except around the capital, where the last viceroys have perpetuated their memory by promenades*, (Paseos, Alamedas,) which bear their names. The want of vegetation exposes the soil to the direct influence of the solar rays; and the humidity which is not lost by filtration through the amygdaloid, basaltic, and spongy rock, is rapidly evaporated and dissolved in air, wherever the foliage of the trees or a luxuriant verdure does not defend the soil from the in fluence of the sun and the dry winds of the south.

As the same cause operates throughout the whole valley, the abundance and circulation of

* Paseo de Buccarelli, de Revillagigedo, de Galvez, de Asanza.

water has sensibly diminished. The lake of Tezcuco, the finest of the five lakes, which Cortez in his letters habitually calls an interior sea, receives much less water from infiltration than in the sixteenth century. Every where the clearing and destruction of forests have produced the same effects. General Andreossi, in his classical work on the Canal du Midi, has proved that the springs have diminished around the reservoir of St. Feneol, merely through a false system introduced in the management of the forests. In the province of Caraccas, the picturesque lake of Tacarigua* has been drying gradually up ever since the sun darted his rays without interposition on the naked and defenceless soil of the vallies of Aragua.

But the circumstance which has contributed the most to the diminution of the lake of Tezcuco is the famous open drain, known by the name of the Desague real de Huehuetoca, which we shall afterwards discuss. This cut in the mountain, first begun in 1607 in the form of a subterranean tunnel, has not only reduced within very narrow limits the two lakes in the northern part of the valley, i. e. the lakes of Zumpango

*New islands appear in it from time to time from the diminution of water (las aparecidas.) The lake of Tacarigua, or Nueva Valencia, is 474 metres (1554 feet) elevated above the level of the sea. (See my Tableaux de la Nature, tom. i. p.

72.