THE VENICE OF MEXICO 



By Walter Hough 



ONE of the pleasurable experiences 

 among those that delight the trav- 

 eler in Mexico is a visit to the 

 home of the Aztec lake dwellers. Much 

 of the charm of the great Valley of Mex- 

 ico, where they live, is due to ihe stretches 

 of water among the trees and verdant 

 fields in a landscape framed in beautiful 

 mountains and bathed with clearest air of 

 heaven. 



Their lakes — Texcoco, Xochimilco, 

 Zumpango, and Chalco — do not reveal 

 themselves except from the high moun- 

 tains encircling the valley. They are 

 shallow bodies of water in the midst of 

 extensive marshes, unapproachable, and 

 lacking the effect of our lakes with their 

 definite shore-lines. For this reason, they 

 have never been highways of civilized 

 commerce, nor has navigation flourished 

 in their shallow waters ; but they were 

 from these very hindrances destined to be 

 jealous mothers of ancient and remark- 

 able States, whose people, protected in the 

 fens, dug out canals and developed an 

 indigenous commerce and transportation 

 to the fullest extent. 



DRAINING THE LAKES OE THE VALLEY OF 

 MEXICO 



They were for modern man a constant 

 menace during seasons of flood and have 

 required enormous engineering works to 

 keep them in bounds. The first of these, 

 never of great value, was begun some 

 300 years ago, and exists at the present 

 time as a gigantic ditch over 13 miles 

 long, 197 feet deep, and 361 feet wide, 

 dug by the patient labor of impressed 

 Indians, and called the Tajo de Nochis- 

 tongo. The latest undertaking is a canal 

 connecting the three lakes and leading 

 their waters out of the valley by a tunnel 

 through the eastern mountains. This 

 splendid piece of engineering, completed 

 some years ago, effectually controls the 

 height of the water in the lakes and pre- 

 vents inundations. 



But long before Cortez came the In- 

 dians of the valley worked in the boggy 



lake lands and dug canals hither and 

 thither — main canals between the lakes 

 and to the great city of Tenochtitlan 

 and smaller canals between their fields. 

 Through this maze of waterways, then 

 as now, they sent their boats and in the 

 fens built their thatched houses. His- 

 torically, Cortez was the first European 

 boat-builder in the New World, when of 

 an imperious necessity he launched his 

 brigantines, of quaint sixteenth century 

 pattern, if one may believe the artists, in 

 the reeking waters of Tezcoco at the spot 

 near Huejutla, where there is now a 

 bridge called Puente de los Bergantines, 

 not far from the capital. 



Pere Sahagun, the Franciscan, records 

 that "the City of Mexico is like another 

 Venice, and the people themselves are 

 comparable to the Venetians in urbanity 

 and savoir." This was written in the six- 

 teenth century, but in the lapse of several 

 hundred years the city's wonderful water 

 environment has become dry ground, and 

 the seeker for lake dwellers will have to 

 look farther afield in the entrancing valley 

 of the sky. 



The way to the present Aztec Venice, 

 which bears the name of Xochimilco, "in 

 the field of flowers," is through one of 

 these ancient canals — a prehistoric water 

 road from Tenochtitlan to the capital and 

 seat of one of the group of seven Aztec 

 tribes which long ago came from remote 

 Aztlan to the rich Valley of Mexico. 



HARD TO GET A START 



The life on the canal, vivid and pictur- 

 esque, is as striking now as it was then ; 

 it may even be suspected that the change 

 from that time to this has not been very 

 great. It is hard to get a start to the land 

 of the fens in more ways than one — the 

 negotiations for passage in a barge with 

 boatmen who display the characteristics 

 of that tribe known the world over ; and 

 the conflicting claims also of all the cos- 

 tumes, incidents, shipping, and so forth, 

 of the boiling, squirming kaleidoscopic 

 canal and shore population on its multi- 



