86 HOUSES AND HOUSE-LIFE OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 
“The soil built over by each ‘calpulli’ probably remained for some 
time the only solid expanse held by the Mexicans. Gradually, however, 
the necessity was felt for an increase of this soil. Remaining unmolested 
‘in the midst of canes and reeds,’ their numbers had augmented, and for 
residence as well as for food a greater area was needed. Fishing and 
hunting no longer satisfied a people whose original propensities were horti- 
cultural; they aspired to cultivate the soil as they had once been accus- 
tomed to, and after the manner of the kindred tribes surrounding them. 
For this purpose they began throwing up little artificial garden beds, ‘ chi- 
nampas,’ on which they planted Indian corn and perhaps some cther vege- 
tables. Such plots are still found, as ‘floating gardens,’ in the vicinity of 
the present city of Mexico, and they are described as follows by a traveler 
of this century : 
«They are artificial gardens, about fifty or sixty yards long, and not 
more than four or five wide. They are separated by ditches of three or 
four yards, and are made by taking the soil from the intervening ditch and 
throwing it on the chinampa, by which means the ground is raised gen- 
erally about a yard, and thus forms a small fertile garden, covered with 
the finest culinary vegetables, fruits, and flowers. * * *’ 
‘Bach consanguine relationship thus gradually surrounded the surface 
on which it dwelt with a number of garden plots sufficient to the wants of 
its members. The aggregate area thereof, including the abodes, formed 
the ‘calpullalli’—soil of the ‘calpulli”—and was held by it as a unit; the single 
tracts, however, being tilled and used for the benefit of the single families. 
The mode of tenure of land among the Mexicans at that period was there- 
fore very simple. The tribe claimed its ferritory, ‘ALTEPETLALLI,’ an unde- 
fined expanse over which it might extend—the ‘calpules,’ however, held and 
possessed within that territory such portions of it as were productive; each 
forcibly reminded here of the houses of Itza on Lake Peten, which were found in 1695. ‘“‘ Hist. de la 
Conq. de los Itzaex,” Lib, VIII, cap. XII, p. 494.” “It was all filled with houses, some with stone walls 
more than one rod high, and higher up of wood, and the roofs of straw, and some only of wood and 
straw. There lived in them all the Inhabitants of the Island brutally together, one relationship occu- 
pying a single house.” See also the highly valuable Introduction to the second Dialogue of Cervantes- 
Saldzar (‘‘ Mexico in 1554”) by my excellent friend Sr. Icazbalceta (pp. 73 and 74). 
1 Alonzo de Zurita (p.51). Ixtlilxochitl (‘‘ Hist. des Chichim,” cap. XXXV, p. 242). Torquemada 
(Lib. XIV, cap. VII, p. 545). Bustamante (‘‘Tezcoco en los ultimos Tiempos de sus antiguas Reyes,” 
p- 232). 
