io8 <3eoarapbfcal motes on 



Cortes's letters published at Nuremberg in 15 24.' After its almost 

 destruction in November, 1521, Cortes employed some 400,000 natives 

 in rebuilding it on the same site ; but since then the lake seems to 

 have considerably subsided, for although still 50 square miles in extent, 

 it is very shallow and has retired two and a half miles from the city. 



During the Spanish rule the chief event was the revolt in 1692^ 

 when the municipal buildings were destroyed. Since then Mexico has 

 been the scene of many revolutions, was captured by the United States 

 Army after the battle of Chapultepec, on September 13, 1847, and by 

 the French Army under Marshall Forey in 1863. But since the over- 

 throw of Maximilian, and the French Intervention in 1867, peace has 

 been established and it has become a great centre of civilizing in- 

 fluences for the surrounding peoples. 



The City of Mexico is 263 miles by rail from Veracruz on the 

 Atlantic, 290 from Acapulco on the Pacific, 285 from Oaxaca, 863 

 from Matamoros on the frontier with the United States, and 1224 miles 

 from El Paso. Mexico is the largest and finest city in Spanish America, 

 and at one time larger than Madrid, the capital of Spain, forming a 

 square of nearly 3 miles both ways, and laid out with perfect regu- 

 larity, all its six hundred streets and lanes running at right angles 

 north to south and east to west, and covering within the walls an area 

 of about ten square miles, with a population now of 539,935. 



The present City of Mexico is almost twice as large as the old one, it 

 having increased towards the northwest, and, strange to say, the new 

 portion is not laid out as regularly as the old one. All the main 

 thoroughfares converge on the central Plaza de Armas, or Main 

 Square, which covers 14 acres, and is tastefully laid out with shady 

 trees, garden plots, marble fountains, and seats. Here also are grouped 

 most of the public buildings, towering above which is the Cathedral, 

 the largest and most sumptuous church in America, which stands on 

 the north side of the plaza on the site of the great pyramidal teocalli 

 or temple of Huitzilopochtli, titular god of the Aztecs. This church, 

 which was founded in 1573 and finished in 1657, at a cost of $2,000,- 

 ooo, for the walls alone, forms a Greek cross, 426 feet long and 203 feet 

 wide, with two great naves and three aisles, twenty side chapels, and a 

 magnificent high altar supported by marble columns, and surrounded 

 by a tumbago balustrade with sixty-two statues of the same rich gold, 

 silver, and copper alloy serving as candelabra. The elaborately carved 

 choir was also enclosed by tumbago railings made in Macao, weighing 

 twenty-six tons, and valued at about $1,500,000. In the interior, the 

 Doric style prevails, and Renaissance in the exterior, which is adorned 

 by five domes and two open towers 218 feet high. At the foot of the 



1 Reproduced in vol. iv. of H. H. Bancroft's History of the Pacific States, San- 

 Francisco, 1833, p. 280. 



