Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/538



518 plan according to which work is at present being pursued is that of reopening an old tunnel, commenced in the last century, leading through the mountains north-west of the city. The Cut of Nochistongo has been abandoned. Critics write to the newspapers that this plan, too, is impracticable; indeed, the general criticism is made that all plans alike are impracticable, and that drainage will dry up the ground and cause the buildings to tumble down. Taking it in all its aspects, after these three hundred years of effort, it is as difficult a question as a community is often called upon to face. Mexico is unlucky in having several such that are almost too much for it.

I have to recall, smiling, too, some of my early experiences in getting information about this drainage matter. I suppose I was rather an uneasy companion in those days. I was in constant quest of knowledge, and the acquisition of it was too often met by indifference, postponement, careless error, or even refusal. My influential friend, Don Francisco de Garay, alone sustained me.

"That is right," he would say. "When I was studying my engineering in Paris, I, too, made them tell me. I would not let them off till my questions were answered."

Alas!—with a feeling like that, after the dinner-party, which prompts what is called esprit d' escalier—how many more questions the returned traveller would like to have asked! I remember that I met, at the house of a Mexican gentleman of wealth, an engineer of the city. Upon learning my desire he professed that he would have great pleasure in putting whatever he knew of the history of the drainage question at my disposal. I called upon him. He was absent, but his wife made an appointment for him a few days ahead. When I called to keep it he was again absent, but this time the wife who was perhaps of French origin; at least she preferred to converse in French—said,