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Charles the Fifth, speaks also of the spring of Amilco, near Churubusco, of which the waters were brought to the city by pipes of burnt earth. This spring is near to that of Santa Fe. We still perceive the remains of this great aqueduct, which was constructed with double pipes, one of which received the water, while they were employed in cleaning the other *. This water was

* Lorenzana, p. 108.-The largest and finest construction of the Indians in this way is the aqueduct of the city of Tezcuco. We still admire the traces of a great mound which was constructed to heighten the level of the water. How must we admire the industry and activity displayed in general by the ancient Mexicans and Peruvians in the irrigation of arid lands! In the maritime part of Peru I have seen the remains of walls, along which water was conducted for a space of from 5 to 6000 metres (from 16,404 to 19,685 feet), from the foot of the Cordillera to the coast. The conquerors of the 16th century destroyed these aqueducts, and that part of Peru is become like Persia, a desert destitute of vegetation. Such is the civilization carried by the Europeans among the people whom they are pleased to call barbarous. -Author.

How much it is to be regretted that Robertson gives usually such general descriptions, that we have a difficulty in forming any thing like a distinct conception of the subjects of them. He says of the Peru canals of irrigation, "By means of artificial canals, conducted with much patience and considerable art from the torrents that poured across their country, they conveyed a regular supply of moisture to their fields."-Would it have been beneath the dignity of a historian, to have specified that art and that patience to his readers for which he did not want materials ?-Trans.

sold in canoes, which traversed the streets of Tenochtitlan. The sources of San Augustin de las Cuevas are the finest and purest; and I imagined I discovered on the road leading from this charming village to Mexico traces of an ancient aqueduct.

We have already named the three principal dikes by which the old city was connected with the terra firma. These dikes partly still exist, and the number has been even increased. They form at present great paved causeways across marshy grounds; and as they are very elevated, they possess the double advantage of admitting the passage of carriages, and containing the overflowings of the lake. The Calzada of Astapalapan is founded on the very same old dike on which Cortez performed such prodigies of valour in his encounters with the besieged. The Calzada of San Anton is still distinguished in our days for the great number of small bridges which the Spaniards and Tlascaltecs found there, when Sandoval, Cortez's companion in arms, was wounded near Coyohuacan*. These Calzadas of San Antonio Abad, of La Piedad, of San Christobal, and of Guadalupe (anciently called the dike of Tepeyacac), were newly reconstructed after the great inundation of 1604, under the viceroy Don Juan de Mendoza y Lima, Marquis

Lorenzana, p. 229, 243.

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de Montesclaros. The only savans of that time, Fathers Torquemada and Geronimo de Zarate, executed the survey and marking out of the causeways. At this period the city of Mexico was paved for the first time; for before the Count de Revillagigedo, no other viceroy had employed himself more successfully in effecting a good police than the Marquis de Montesclaros.

The objects which generally attract the attention of the traveller are, 1. the cathedral, of which a small part is in the style vulgarly called Gothic: the principal edifice, which has two towers ornamented with pilasters and statues, is of very beautiful symmetry and very recent construction. 2. The treasury 2. The treasury adjoining to the palace of the viceroys, a building from which, since the beginning of the sixteenth century, more than 6500 millions* in gold and silver coin have been issued. 3. The convents, among which the great convent of St. Francis is particularly distinguished, which from alms alone possesses an annual revenue of half a million of francst. This vast edifice was at first intended to be constructed on the ruins of the temple of Huitzilopochtli; but these ruins having been destined for the foundation of the cathedral, the convent was begun in 1531 in its actual situa

* 270,855,000l. sterling. Trans.
+ 20,8351. sterling. Trans.

tion. It owes its existence to the great activity of a serving brother or lay monk, Fray Pedro de Gante, an extraordinary man, who was said to have been the natural son of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, and who was a great benefactor of the Indians, to whom he was the first who taught the most useful mechanical arts of Europe. 4. The hospital, or rather the two united hos pitals, of which the one maintains 600 and the other 800 children and old people. This esta blishment, in which both order and cleanliness may be seen, but little industry, has a revenue of 250,000 francs*. A rich merchant lately bequeathed to it by his testament six millions of francst, which the royal treasury laid hold of, on the promise of paying five per cent. for it. 5. The acordada, a fine edifice, of which the prisons are generally spacious and well aired. They reckon in this house, and in the other prisons of the acordada which depend on it, more than 1200 individuals, among whom are a great number of smugglers, and the unfortunate Indian prisoners, dragged to Mexico from the provincias internas (Indios Mecos), of whom we have already spoken in the 6th and 7th chapters. 6. The School of Mines, the newly begun edi fice, and the old provisory establishment, with its fine collections in physics, mechanics, and

* 10,470l. sterling. Trans. † 250,020. sterling. Trans.

mineralogy*. 7. The botanical garden, in one of the courts of the viceroy's palace. It is very small, but extremely rich in vegetable productions, either rare or interesting for commerce. 8. The edifices of the university and the public library, which is very unworthy of so great and ancient an establishment. 9. The Academy of Fine Arts, with a collection of ancient casts. 10. The equestrian statue of King Charles the Fourth in the Plaza Mayor, and the sepulchral monument which the Duke de Monteleone consecrated to the great Cortez, in a chapel of the Hospital de los Naturales. It is a simple family monument, adorned with a bust in bronze, representing the hero in the prime of life, executed by M. Tolsa. Wherever we traverse Spanish America, from Buenos Ayres to Monterey, and from Trinidad and Portorico to Panama and Veragua, we no where meet with a national monument erected by the public gratitude to the glory of Christopher Columbus and Hernan Cortez !

Those who are addicted to the study of his

*There are two other very remarkable oryctognostical and geological collections belonging to Professor Cervantes and the Oidor M. Caravajal. This respectable magistrate also possesses a superb cabinet of shells, collected during his residence in the Philippine Islands, where he displayed the same zeal for the physical sciences for which he is so honourably distinguished at Mexico.

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