two leagues whichever way we wish to enter. Four dikes lead to the city: they are made by the hand of man, and are of the breadth of two lances. The city is as large as Seville or Cordova. The streets, I merely speak of the principal ones, are very narrow and very large; some are half dry and half occupied by navigable canals, furnished with very well constructed wooden bridges, broad enough for ten men on horseback to pass at the same time. The market-place, twice as large as that of Seville, is surrounded with an immense portico, under which are exposed for sale all sorts of merchandize, eatables, ornaments made of gold, silver, lead, pewter, precious stones, bones, shells, and feathers; delft ware, leather, and spun cotton. We find hewn stone, tiles, and timber fit for building. There are lanes for game, others for roots and garden fruits there are houses where barbers shave the head (with razors made of obsidian); and there are houses resembling our apothecary shops, where prepared medicines, unguents, and plasters are sold. There are houses where drink is sold. The market abounds with so many things, that I am unable to name them all to your highness. To avoid confusion, every species of merchandize is sold in a separate lane; every thing is sold by the yard, but nothing has hitherto been seen to be weighed in the market. In the midst of the great square is a house which I shall call l'audiencia, in which ten or twelve persons

sit constantly for determining any disputes which may arise respecting the sale of goods. There are other persons who mix continually with the crowd, to see that a just price is asked. We have seen them break the false measures which they had seized from the merchants."

Such was the state of Tenochtitlan in 1520, according to the description of Cortez himself. I have sought in vain in the archives of his family, preserved at Mexico in the Casa del Estado, for the plan which this great captain ordered to be drawn up of the environs of the capital, and which he sent to the Emperor, as he says, in his third letter published by Cardinal Lorenzana. The Abbe Clavigero has ventured to give a plan of the lake of Tezcuco, such as he supposes it to have been in the sixteenth century. This sketch is very inaccurate, though much preferable to that given by Robertson, and other European authors, equally unskilled in the geography of Mexico. I have drawn on the map of the valley of Tenochtitlan the old extent of the salt-water lake, such as I conceived it from the historical account of Cortez, and some of his contemporaries. In 1520, and long after, the villages of Iztapalapan, Coyohuacan (improperly called Cuyacan), Tacubaja, and Tacuba were quite near the banks of the Lake of Tezcuco. Cortez says expressly*, that the most part of the houses

* Lorenzana, p. 229, 195, 102.

of Coyohuacan, Culuacan, Chulubuzco, Mexicaltzingo, Iztapalapan, Cuitaguaca, and Mizqueque, were built in the water on piles, so that frequently the canoes could enter by an under door. The small hill of Chapoltepec, on which the viceroy Count Galvez constructed a castle, was no longer an island in the lake of Tezcuco in the time of Cortez. On this side the continent approached to within about 3000 metres * of the city of Tenochtitlan, consequently the distance of two leagues indicated by Cortez in his letter to Charles V. is not altogether accurate: he ought to have retrenched the one half of this, excepting, however, the part of the western side at the small porphyritical hill of Chapoltepec. We may well believe, however, that this hill was, some centuries before, also a small island, like the Peñol del Marques, or the Peñol de los Banos. It appears extremely probable, from geological observations, that the lakes had been on the decrease long before the arrival of the Spaniards, and before the construction of the canal of Huehuetoca.

The Aztecs, or Mexicans, before founding on a groupe of islands in 1325 the capital which yet subsists, had already inhabited for fifty-two years another part of the lake farther to the south, of which the Indians could never point out to me

9842 feet. Trans.

the site. The Mexicans left Aztlan towards the year 1160, and only arrived, after a migration of 56 years, in the valley of Tenochtitlan, by Malinalco, in the Cordillera of Toluca, and by Tula. They established themselves first at Zumpanco, then on the southern declivity of the mountains of Tepeyac, where the magnificent temple, dedicated to our lady of Guadaloupe, is situated. In the year 1245 (according to the chronology of the Abbe Clavigero), they arrived at Chapoltepec. Harassed by the petty princes of Zaltocan, whom the Spanish historians honour with the title of kings, the Aztecs, to preserve their independence, withdrew to a groupe of small islands called Acocolco, situated towards the southern extremity of the lake of Tezcuco. There they lived for half a century in great want, compelled to feed on roots of aquatic plants, insects, and a problematical reptile called axolotl, which Mr. Cuvier looks upon to be the nympha of an unknown salamander *. Having been reduced to slavery by the kings of Tezcuco or Acolhuacan, the Mexicans were forced to abandon their village in the midst of the lake, and to take refuge on the continent at Tizapan. The services which they

* M. Cuvier has described in my Recueil d'Observations Zoologiques et d'Anatome comparé, p. 119. M. Dumeril believes that the axolotl, of which M. Bonpland and myself have brought individuals in good preservation, is a new species of proteus. Zoologie Analytique, p. 93.

rendered to their masters in a war against the inhabitants of Xochimilco again procured them liberty. They established themselves first at Acatzitzintlan, which they called Mexicalzingo, from the name of Mexitli, or Huitzilopochtli*, their god of war, and next at Iztacalco. They removed from Iztacalco to the little islands which then appeared to the E.N.E. of the hill of Chapoltepec, in the western part of the lake of Tezcuco, in obedience to an order of the oracle of Aztlan. An ancient tradition was preserved among this horde, that the fatal term of their migration was to be a place where they should find an eagle sitting on the top of a nopal, of which the roots penetrated the crevices of a rock. This nopal (cactus), alluded to in the oracle, was seen by the Aztecs in the year 1325, which is the second Callit of the Mexican æra, on a small

* Huitzlin means humming-bird; and opochtli means left; for the god was painted with humming-bird's feathers under the left foot. The Europeans have corrupted the word huitzilopochtli into huichilobos, and vizlipuzli. The brother of this god, who was much revered by the inhabitants of Tezcuco, was called Tlaca-huepan-Cuexcotzin.

As the first Acatl corresponds to the year 1519, the second Calli, in the first half of the fourteenth century, can only be the year 1325, and not the years 1324, 1327, and 1341, which the translator of the Raccolta di Mendoza, as well as Siguenza, cited by Boturini, and Betencourt, cited by Torquemada, allege to have been the date of the foundation of Mexico. See the chronological dissertation of the Abbé Clavigero, Storia di Messico, T. IV. p. 54.