Summary
We are more and more enthusiastically charmed with this peerless Mexico. What a climate–what scenery! What a brilliant and busy city – what beauties and wonders on all sides!
The Viga I am quite delighted with. It is an enchanting promenade, with a canal running on the side of it, half-overshadowed by lovely trees. The Arbol de Peru (Peruvian pepper-tree) was conspicuously graceful and striking among them. There were crowds of Indians in their flat canoes, almost lost among heaps of flowers, and fruits, and vegetables.
We visited the celebrated Chinampas, formerly the floating garden of the Aztecs, now stationary. They have taken up their permanent abode at a little distance from the canal of Chalco. The metropolis is principally supplied with vegetables from them still. There are flowers sprinkled here and there. The old chroniclers tell us that in 1245, after many persecutions, the Aztecs, wandering from place to place, left Chapultepec to establish themselves in an island group to the south of Tezcuco Lake. Oppressed by Tezcucan chieftains, they sought refuge in Tezapan, where, having assisted the princes of that land in some insignificant wars, they were allowed to establish themselves, in freedom, in a city, which they named Mexicalsingo. But they were commanded by some oracle to transport themselves and their families from thence, to some islands to the eastward of Chapultepec, and to the western side of the Tezcuco Lake.
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- Travels in the United States, etc. during 1849 and 1850 , pp. 90 - 101Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009