Page:Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive.djvu/122

120 Catholic superstition, when we preserve in our midst to-day a score of myths and delusions equally as vague and less dignified.

From the height upon which the upper chapel is perched, which is reached by such interminable flights of stone steps! a lovely view of the valley of Mexico, only less beautiful than that of Chapultepec, is obtained. The shrunken outline of Lake Texcoco, in the midst of its carbonate plains, shows more clearly than from the other eminence; and piles of shining white chemical matter, like that of the alkali fields of Nevada, glisten in the sun, waiting refining in the reduction works beyond. One understands from this outlook the enormous change that must have taken place in the natural aspect of this vicinity since Cortes and his warlike band crossed the narrow causeway that formed the only communication between the mainland and the city built in the lake, and only a few elevated points like this of Guadalupe lifted themselves above the shining waste of water which stretched for ten miles about. The present condition makes the question of drainage for Mexico a most complex problem. Its surroundings to-day make it not unlike a vast sewer, made possible to live in,