Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/238

228 towns, great and small, beside its banks. Some of these villages rise to the dignity of towns; others are mere halting-places for the boats.

But what made the canal? Who and when, may be beyond our reach. What did it is more apprehensible. It was the floating island. That curiosity of this country is a veritable fact. As soon almost as you leave the wall, you perceive these novel lands. The ridgeway of the canal is wide enough for several horses. On one side is the long ditch, on the other many short ones, cut straight, not more than a rod or two apart, filled with water, and inclosing plats of ground of about a quarter of an acre. The ditch, cut square about these plats, allows the proprietor, lessee, or laborer to get easily around his lot in his bit of a dory, or scow, from six to twelve feet long, and two wide.

The ground is thus patch worked for miles. At times the spaces are larger; but that is their uniform character, at least near the city. Nearer the mountains they get into almost natural formations, and grow shrubs and even, trees on their spongy foundations. This soil is largely made. The soft, saturated earth is superplaced with layers of muck and sand and other soils. These sink gradually by wash and by weather, and other soils are placed upon them. So they are kept up and made fit for culture, and grow deeper with every deposit.

They hardly float, but they rock and yield to a footstep. Farther out they are said to fluctuate somewhat, yet there they never float as a boat, but at the most wave a little to and fro with the moving stream. These gardens are cultivated the year round. "The plowman overtakes the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed." It is perpetual seed-time and harvest.

We ride by the once famous hill, where the sacred fire was kindled once every half-century, a black-purple peak, perhaps three hundred feet above the marsh. All the fires in all the land were extinguished, and out of flint and steel, from the bleeding heart of the human sacrifice, the new flame was here kindled, and sent throughout the land. On return we enter by the paseo, where the