144 



TEZCUCO. 



horses in attempting to cross it. The ground is firm, 

 however, at the base of the trees, which are planted very 

 close ; many of them are of great size — fifteen or sixteen 

 yards in circumference. They are all of the noble spe- 

 cies of cypress mentioned in a former letter, as the cu- 

 pressus disticha. A raised causeway running from the 

 northeast angle, evidently connected this island garden 

 with the main land. 



There exists no reason why this should not have been 

 one of the numerous gardens of Montezuma ; but, in all 

 probability, the hands which planted those aged trees 

 belonged to men of an age greatly anterior to that mon- 

 arch : quien sabe ? — who knows ? I have seen few 7 rem- 

 nants of antiquity in the valley of Mexico which inter- 

 ested me more than this solitary grove. 



Before we quit the shore of Lake Tezcuco, I may 

 mention a circumstance which has struck me greatly, as 

 I have every reason to credit the source of my informa- 

 tion. 



I have made you attentive to the gradual change 

 which has been operated on the surface of the valley of 

 Mexico, from the retirement of its waters within nar- 

 rower bounds. At what time, or under what circum- 

 stances, those waters first overflowed the country, it was 

 to be expected that even tradition would be silent, when 

 it is recollected that the people through whose medium 

 the few traditions we possess were transmitted to our 

 knowledge, had only occupied the valley for a few brief 

 generations. But that there was a time, however re- 

 mote, at which the waters, if they existed at all, occu- 

 pied a much lower level than even at the present day, 

 at the same time that the continent was in the occupa- 

 tion of people considerably advanced in the* rude arts 

 of semi-civilization, would seem to be an incontrovertible 

 fact. 



Some time before our visit, a number of workmen 

 were employed on the neighbouring estate of Chapingo, 

 to excavate a canal over that part of the plain, from which 

 the waters have gradually retired during the last three 

 centuries. At four feet below the surface, they reached 



