84 



MEXICO. 



snow-covered peaks arose on either band, and they 

 marched within sight and hearing of the great volcano 

 which menaced their path, they gained, in fine, the west- 

 ern slope, and saw the green and cultivated fields and 

 gardens spreading like a carpet at their feet, round the 

 bright and inland sea which then encircled the " Venice 

 of the Aztecs !" With what ravishment must they have 

 marked the thousand specks which moved upon the wa- 

 ters round that broad city spread below, with its white 

 roofs, streets, temples, and edifices? what must have 

 been their amazement at descrying the long and solid 

 causeways dividing the waters ; the innumerable towns 

 and villages scattered over the surface of the fertile 

 plain ; and the huge circle of mountains which appeared 

 to form like a bulwark on every side ? No ! I could not 

 realize all they felt — but, amid the desolation of most of 

 the ancient fields and gardens ; the aridity and utter 

 barrenness of much of the broad plain which now girdles 

 the city in every direction ; the diminished extent of the 

 lake ; the solitude reigning on its waters ; the destruc- 

 tion of the forests on the mountain slopes ; I still felt that 

 the round world can hardly match the beauty and inter- 

 est of that landscape. Even if man had destroyed, with- 

 out in some degree repairing the wrongs he had commit- 

 ted to that lovely scene, by the fruits of his industry and 

 genius, there is that about the whole scenery which is 

 above him, and beyond being affected by him. But let 

 us do the stern old conquerors justice. Their minds ap- 

 pear to have been imbued with the pervading spirit of 

 the land which they conquered. All around them was 

 strange, and wonderful, and colossal — and their concep- 

 tions and their labours took the same stamp. Look at 

 their works : the moles, aqueducts, churches, roads — 

 and the luxurious City of Palaces which has risen from 

 the clay-built ruins of Tenochtitlan, at a height above the 

 ocean, at which, in the Old World, the monk of St. Ber- 

 nard alone drags through a shivering and joyless exist- 

 ence ! 



If the general features of the valley of Mexico are 



