PARK AND CEMETERY. 
51 
world, and we hear but little from them of the 
scarcity of farm labor. 
It will be said that banking and transportation 
facilities would be lacking frequently, but the 
. greater cheapness of the land would more than 
counterbalance the slight inconvenience, and the re- 
sultant permanence and contentment of the work 
people would be worth striving for. 
There are a number of villages in the country 
to-day possessing advantages of the kind hinted at, 
and their thrift is potent to anyone crossing their 
boundaries. 
How best to provide for a something to elevate 
the village populations and provide them a never 
failing fund of recreation is one of the most worthy 
subjects of thought. 
Let them have a “common,” a playground, by 
all means to begin with, where the young men and 
women too may have free opportunity to stretch 
themselves at archery, tennis, baseball, cricket and 
athletics. A broad, ample field of turf with a fringe 
of trees around it fills the bill exactly, and given 
the land in a central location it is easy to attain. It 
simply requires such plowing and harrowing as is 
given to a cornfield under the best culture, and 
seeding very early in the season with some three 
bushels per acre of lawn grass — red top or blue 
grass or both, with a quart or so of white clover per 
acre sown separately. About the first of July, if 
the season is at all favorable, the reaper may be run 
over it — the lawn mower for the rest of the season. 
As for the planting of trees, it may be done at 
once, for it is not expensive. The trees themselves, 
according to their kind, may be supplied at from 
50 cents to perhaps $1.25 each, and their planting 
may cost anywhere from 10 cents to 5.0 cents each, 
depending upon how they are planted and who 
plants them. Never plant them too thick. Take but 
little heed of different advice. The time to “ thin 
tree's” in this or any country is when they are 
planted. There is absolutely no safety in deferring 
their thinning to a future time. Nearly all the park 
and street planting of the country has been ruined 
by the “plant thick and thin quick” heresies, for 
the “thin quick” part has not materialized. 
A. “belt” of trees around a common playground 
or park if you will may be a single row, or better, 
a somewhat irregular belt, thickened in places by 
an undergrowth of such shrubs as will thrive in the 
climate. These are cheaper by a third, or a half, 
or sometimes three-quarters, than trees. Often they 
will be matured and gone before the trees are half 
grown, and this is precisely the kind of thickening 
that is sensible, and not such as will crowd and suf- 
focate and permanently strangle, as trees in the 
woods strangle each other. 
PLAZA, ALAMEDA AND PASEO IN THE CITY OF 
MEXICO. 
I. 
PLAN OP PLAZA CITY OF MEXICO 
cient law, found in the 
“Recopilacion de Leyes 
de los Reinos de los In- 
dias,” completed in 1680, 
and probably traceable 
back to a Roman source, 
that upon laying out a Spanish colonial town, a rect 
angular plaza was made the basis of operations. And 
thus it is that a plaza is an indispensable character- 
istic of a Mexican town. If the town was inland, 
the plaza was to occupy its territorial centre. If 
upon a river or bay, it was to be located upon the 
water front. It w'as intended that the juzgado 
should be erected in the centre; and other public 
buildings, including the church, were to front upon 
it. The sides of the plaza were in most cases 
towards the cardinal points, though some cases have 
come under the observation of the present writer, 
of the north and south line running through corners 
diagonally opposite. 
The original intention was to make the plaza, as 
the name, by Spanish usage, signifies, the market 
place. But more recently the custom has prevailed 
of making it a park, so that the idea conveyed by 
the name in Spanish American towns, is that of a 
garden adorned with a fountain, and within the 
shadow of church towers. 
Besides plazas, most of the larger Mexican towns 
have Alamedas and Paseos. Chihuahua, Aguas 
Calientes, Queretaro, Leon, Guadahajara Morelia, 
Puebla and Vera Cruz have notable examples of 
one or the other or both. Alamedas were origin- 
ally intended as parks, and received their name from 
the alamos, poplar or cottonwood trees, with which 
they were planted. The present distinction between 
a plaza and an Alameda would seem to be that the 
latter is by far the larger and is upon the outskirts 
rather than in the centre of the town. 
The word paseo is used for a procession, but it 
is also applied to an elaborately adorned public 
thoroughfare. Apparently, however, before the 
term can be applied, the drive must be made a 
place of fashionable recreation. And upon seeing 
the paseo of a large city upon days when it is be- 
ing put to its intended use, one may perhaps see 
the analogy between the “procession” and the fash- 
ionable drive. 
The City of Mexico has secured several plazas, 
and at least three Paseos, yet but one Alameda, 
— which suggests another differentiating character- 
