Page:The Native Races of the Pacific States, volume 2.djvu/185



innumerable fountains and artificial cascades. Little of the ancient glory of either palace or gardens is now left, except the natural beauty of the foliage that clothes the hill, and the magnificent view to be obtained from the summit. Two statues of Montezuma II. and his father, cut in bas relief on the porphyry rock, were still to be seen, Gama tells us, in the middle of the last century, but these are now gone, swept away by the same ruthless hands that laid waste the hanging gardens and tore down halls and monuments until the groves of gigantic cypresses are all that is left standing in the gardens of Chapultepec that ministered to the pleasure of the ancient owners. Peter Martyr, describing the palace at Iztapalapan, writes, in the language of an early translator: "That house also hath orchardes, finely planted with diuers trees, and herbes, and flourishing flowers, of a sweete smell. There are also in the same, great standing pooles of water with many kindes of fish, in the which diuers kindes of all sortes of waterfoule are swimminge. To the bottome of these lakes, a man may descend by marble steppes brought farr of. They report strange thinges of a walke inclosed with nettinges of Canes, least any one should freely come within the voyde plattes of grounde, or to the fruite of the trees. Those hedges are made with a thousande pleasant deuises, as it falleth out in those delicate purple crosse alleyes, of mirtle, rosemary, or boxe, al very delightfull to behold."[33]

Nezahualcoyotl, the Tezcucan Solomon, was no whit behind his royal brother of Mexico in the matter of splendid country residences and gardens. Not content with the royal pleasure-grounds called Huectecpan, writes the Chichimec historian,[34] this great king made others, such as the forest so famous in Tezcotzincan history, and those called Cauchiacac, Tzinacamoztoc,