MEXICO AND MEXICANS 



489 



This great drainage canal starts at a 

 point east of the city and, winding its 

 way between the Guadalupe range and 

 Lake Texcoco, ends near the town of 

 Zumpango, after crossing the Guadalupe 

 River by means of a great aqueduct. The 

 depth at the starting point is 16 feet and 

 at the terminal 65 feet. At one place it 

 was necessary to tunnel the Xalpan 

 Mountain, this tunnel being about 7 miles 



lon £- 



Mexico City is the most complete mix- 

 ture of the ancient and the modern to be 

 found in the New World. The old city 

 might date anywhere from the tenth cen- 

 tury, from its appearance. The new city 

 is ultra modern, and you step from the 

 sixteenth to the twentieth century by 

 walking across the street. In the new 

 part of the city there are miles of streets, 

 with magnificent homes on both sides, 

 that remind one of Massachusetts avenue 

 between Dupont Circle and Sheridan Cir- 

 cle in Washington or of Riverside Drive 

 in New York. 



the: parade: op society 



The parade ground of Mexico City is 

 the Avienda de San Francisco. This 

 short street extends from the Mexican 

 White House to the Alameda, and is only 

 about 24 feet from curb to curb. Here, 

 at the approach of twilight, every smart 

 equipage in the capital comes. Down 

 the one side of the street and up the other 

 side moves the procession at a slow walk, 

 while everybody looks at everybody else. 



It is not bad manners to look at the 

 beautiful ladies and their large families 

 of children — rather it would be distinctly 

 bad manners not to, for this is a parade 

 both for seeing and being seen. Even 

 the moving-picture playhouses are pro- 

 vided with balconies, where the patrons 

 may go between reels to watch the pass- 

 ing show. 



Once the government, back in the days 

 of Diaz, when no hand dared dispute its 

 authority, ordered the parade to move 

 down Avienda de San Francisco and to 

 return via Cinco de Mayo street, but that 

 took the privilege of seeing the returning 

 crowd away from those going in the op- 

 posite direction, and even the firm hand 

 of the law couldn't overrule the order of 



society ; so that even now, in the days of 

 revolution, the parade still goes down one 

 side of Avienda de San Francisco and up 

 the other side. 



As Avienda de San Francisco unites 

 the old and the new cities, so does the 

 Cinco de Mayo (Fifth of May) unite the 

 cathedral, stateliest of all the religious 

 edifices on the continent, with the theater, 

 most beautiful, although unfinished, of all 

 the amusement places in America. The 

 Cinco de Mayo is the Wall Street of 

 Mexico, and the buildings which line it 

 are modern in every respect. 



The Paseo de la Re forma, extending 

 from Chapultepec to the Avienda de 

 Juarez, a short avenue connecting the 

 Paseo with Avienda de San Francisco, is 

 one of the finest driveways of the world. 

 Passing through the new city, with two 

 driveways divided by a lane of tropical 

 trees and flowers, with here and there a 

 beautiful circle and a splendid monument, 

 there is nothing in the New World or the 

 Old that surpasses it. The most magnifi- 

 cent mornings anywhere to be found 

 smile down on it winter and summer, and 

 no traveler who ever drove up the Paseo 

 de la Reforma in the forenoon can forget 

 that drive, even though he has seen all 

 the famous avenues of the world. 



The city is full of interesting places. 

 Whether it be the cathedral, which rears 

 its majestic towers to heaven on the very 

 spot where the sacred temple of the 

 Aztecs stood, and where tens of thou- 

 sands of human beings were sacrificed to 

 the sun ; whether it be the Hospital de 

 Jesus, built on the site where Cortes and 

 Montezuma first met, and supported to 

 this day from the revenues of the estate 

 of Cortes ; whether it be the Jockey Club, 

 housed in the beautiful House of Tiles ; 

 whether it be the bronze equestrian statue 

 of Charles IV of Spain, declared by 

 Humboldt to be second only to the statue 

 of Marcus Aurelius at Rome, or whether 

 it be Chapultepec, with its memories of 

 the American triumph in Mexico, there 

 is no place with more attractions from a 

 historic standpoint than Mexico City. 



A PRACTICAL CHARITY 



The national pawn shop is one of the 

 unique institutions of the capital. It was 



