Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/344

336 valley, of their wanderings on the lake borders for years, the shifts they were put to to obtain even the vilest food, as they were driven away from solid and fertile soil by other tribes, it does not seem improbable that their necessities should have driven them to avail themselves of the floating islands of bulrush and reeds set adrift by the storms of the rainy season.

The canal leading from Mexico into the lakes was formerly the great route for all the native trade from Cuernavaca and the south by the way of Chalco, and in the towns of Xochimilco and Mexicalcingo we find now Aztecs of purest blood, speaking their own unadulterated language. The lakes are filled with marsh, and are not open, but traversed by countless water-ways called acalotes, or canals. The floating gardens are cut from this vast mat of vegetation, called the cinta, which is composed of a multitude of water plants, as the tula, or bulrush, liliums, water ranunculuses, polygonums, etc.,—over twenty species in number,—and which is said to have no attachment to the bottom of the lake. A body of the cinta, in shape a parallelogram, is cut out by the Indians, and the mud dredged up from the lake bottom poured over it until a deep deposit is formed of the richest soil in the world. This is constantly renewed, as the garden sinks deeper and deeper, until finally perhaps it finds a resting-place, and becomes immovable. But when freshly made it undoubtedly floats, and may even be dragged from its original position, in order that the Indian gardener may have free access to all sides of it in his canoe. In time of storms, the navigation of these lakes is rendered dangerous by detached masses of the cinta, called bandoleros, which sometimes float into the canals, cutting off all communication, and imprisoning the boatmen within walls that cannot be scaled or penetrated.

Between the ridges that separate Chalco and Xochimilco from the salt Tezcoco (see Frontispiece) is pointed out to-day that hill celebrated in Aztec history. La Estrella, or the Hill of the Star. It was to this point that the Aztecs, at the memorable period known as the termination of their cycle, wended their way in long processions, headed by the priests, and built