Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/65

 has been done with the Chicago River of late. A great Spanish drain in the early seventeenth century, the Tajo of Nochistongo, was cut through the mountains, and got rid of them in the direction of the Atlantic.

But Texcoco itself has no outlet, and, as experience has proved, even with only Chalco and Xochimilco to be taken care of, is still liable to overflow. With relief from this peril is inseparably bound up the drainage problem. The fall is so slight at best, that though Lake Texcoco be preserved at a normal level, and kept from backing up into the sewers, there is no destination for the sewage received by it, which lies festering in the stagnant water. With the rest is complicated also the irrigation of the valley. No end of plans have been offered to resolve these difficulties. Their history would make an interesting chapter by itself. Some have proposed to pump out the lake by steam; others, to intercept the waters running into it, and allow it to dry up naturally; another, to exhaust it by means of a great siphon of stone and cement. But the judgment of most is in favor of establishing a current, through a canal, to some point lower than the lake; and the mountains in the neighborhood have been searched for the most favorable point of exit for such a canal.

The plan was officially adopted, in fact, and a considerable beginning made, under the direction of an able engineer of foreign education, Don Francisco Garay. But the works were allowed to languish. Neither government nor community seemed more than half-hearted in the effort to get rid of evils to which they had so long been used. The problem still remains one of the most pressing of those to be resolved, and one of the most interesting to foreigners intending to make Mexico their home.