1.36 Ten Years of my Life. 



The town was later called Mexico, which either comes frorh 

 an Indian word signifying a fountain, or more probably from 

 Mexitli, the name of one of their principal idols. As the date 

 of the fountain of Tenochtitlan is given the i8th July, 1327. 



At the time when Cortez arrived in Mexico the city had 

 300,000 inhabitants. 1 shall not speak of its past splendour, 

 for it is described in hundreds of books containing the history 

 of the Conquest. But all this splendour, all the magnificent 

 buildings, have been destroyed, for Cortez, furious at the resis- 

 tance of the Aztekes, destroyed their city on the 13th of 

 August, 1 521, and very soon commenced to rebuild it after a 

 new plan. 



' Thus originated the present city of Mexico, which is now 

 inhabited by 200,000 people. It is six leagues in circumfer- 

 ence, and has four hundred and eighty-two streets, which are 

 mostly straight, paved, and provided with side-walks. There 

 are sixty large and smaller squares, fifteen monasteries, twenty- 

 two nunneries, seventy-eight churches and chapels, three great 

 iheatres, two arenas for bull-fights, three principal promenades, 

 len hospitals, &c. 



The streets of Mexico are extremely long and mostly wide. 

 The houses have never more than two storeys, and on the out- 

 side look extremely plain and monotonous. They have all the 

 appearance of huge cubes, on account of their flat roofs. 

 These flat roofs form a kind of yard, and are always surrounded 

 with a breast-high wall. 



Like all Spanish cities, Mexico has its Alameda. Don Luis > 

 Velasco, one of the earliest viceroys, commenced it in 1593. 

 It closed then the Quemadero, the place where the Inquisition 

 burnt more poor Indians than the priests of the Aztekes slaugh- 

 tered in honour of Vitzliputzli. The establishment of a pleasure- 

 ground near this horrid place was at that time not thought 

 improper, for the burning of heretics and wretches who could 

 not understa-nd the mysteries of the Christian religion was then 

 a very fashionable, and at the same time religious, recreation. 

 At the end of the eighteenth century, religion had become less 

 ferocious, and the Viceroy, Count de Revillagigedo, who orna- 

 mented and enlarged the Alameda to its present extent, removed 

 this disgraceful abomination. 



The ^\■hole Alameda forms an oblong square of five hundred 

 yards by two hundred and sixty, and is enclosed by a wall, 



