98 



APOPOTLA. 



vicinity of Tacuba, and the road leading to it : the scene 

 of the disastrous flight of Cortez, with his handful of 

 troops and allies, on the night of the first of July, 1520, 

 long known and deplored as La Noche Triste. 



It was not unusual among the European residents in 

 Mexico, to ride at an early hour out to the village of San 

 Cosmo, to an olive garden attached to a meson, situated 

 tw T o miies from the west gate, and probably on the very 

 verge of w 7 hat was once the lake, and the termination of 

 the ancient causeway, on which the roused vengeance of 

 the Mexican cost the invader half his comrades. Within 

 the bounds of the city, and close to the foreign cemetery, 

 you are shown the dike over which Alvarado made his 

 celebrated leap in his extremity. It is now a ditch of 

 about three yards across, and is still called the Salto de 

 Alvarado. 



The views along this route towards Chapultepec on 

 the left, and Guadaloupe on the right, are exquisitely 

 beautiful. 



Another hamlet, Apopotla, which you pass half a mile 

 before you reach Tacuba, contains, within the enclosure 

 of its churchyard, one of those noble cypresses of the 

 country, which you still find scattered here and there, of 

 a size w r hich warrants their being considered monuments 

 of an age anterior to the earliest traditions of the conti- 

 nent. That at Apopotla is a mighty wreck, with a bole 

 fifty feet in diameter at the height of a man, and of much 

 greater girth above. 



The size to which this noble species, the cupressus 

 disticha, attains in some parts of New Spain, is almost in- 

 credible. There is one at Atlixco, in the intendency of 

 Puebla, measuring seventy-six feet in circumference ; and 

 the largest known, is to be seen at Mitla, in Oaxaca ; 

 which, still in its prime, is no less than ninety-two feet 

 round the trunk. The largest in the vicinity of Mexico, 

 are those in the ancient garden, at the foot of Chapulte- 

 pec, of which the most remarkable may be sixty feet in 

 circumference. 



Tacuba lies near the foot of the hills, and is at the 



