460 ANNUAL. REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1923 



square corresponding with the points of the compass and inclosing 

 an area of about 10 acres. At the northwestern point of this 

 quadrangle another double row of lordly cypresses runs westwardly 

 toward a dyke north of which there is a deep oblong tank neatly 

 walled and filled with water * * *. Along the raised banks 

 and beneath the double line of the majestic trees were the walks 

 and orchards in which Nezahualcoyotl and his courtiers amused 

 themselves * * *." In his charming book "Anahuac," Prof. 

 E. B. Tylor, who visited Mexico in 1856, wrote of the grove (then 

 called the " Bosque del Contador ") : " This is a grand square, 

 looking toward the cardinal points and composed of ahuehuetes, 

 grand old deciduous cypresses, many of them 40 feet around and 

 older than the discovery of America." 



In her book on Mexico, Miss Susan Hale mentions having seen in 

 1891 " a magnificent grove of lofty ahuehuetes surrounding a large 

 quadrangle." At the present day, although their ranks are sadly 

 thinned, many of the superb old historical trees exist, furnishing 

 living proof of the grand scale on which the Texcocan king planned 

 his pleasure gardens. A sixteenth century map reveals that at that 

 time not far from the above quadrangle there was another grove 

 in a large circular inclosure. It may have been in imitation of this 

 or in accordance with the native mystical ideas associated with the 

 circle that the king of Atzcapotzalco laid out the beautiful circular 

 grove of ahuehuetes which still exists, marking the site of another 

 bygone pleasance. 



The most famous of Nezahualcoyotl's pleasances was that on 

 the high conical hill named Texcotzinco, which overlooks a pano- 

 ramic view of exquisite beauty with the Lake of Texcoco, lying 

 between the verdant plains and the distant mountains beyond it. 

 Pomar relates that here the king had "many different kinds of 

 plants of variegated colors and singular odors; not only those that 

 grow on the spot but also others brought from the Temperate 

 and Tropical Zones." Here again archeological remains corroborate 

 the truth of the native accounts of former splendor, and reveal 

 how, by means of an ingeniously constructed aqueduct and the 

 filling in of an intervening ravine by means of a colossal solid con- 

 struction, an abundance of water was brought from the neighboring 

 heights, about 3 leagues distant, to a reservoir with walls more than 

 8 feet high, on the top of the hill, whence it was distributed in all 

 directions by means of stuccoed channels. In 1850 Brantz Mayer 

 verified that " the hill of Texcotzinco is connected with another 

 hill on the east by a tall embankment about 200 feet high, upon 

 whose level tops, which may be crossed by three persons on horseback 

 abreast, are the remains of an ancient aqueduct built of baked clay, 

 the pipes of which are now as perfect as the day they were first laid." 



