to rise from the
water itself, for the intervening flat is soon foreshortened into
nothing. At the present moment it is evident that the level of the lake
is much higher than usual. A little way off, on our right, is the Penon
de los Banos--"the rock of baths"--a porphyritic hill forced up by
volcanic agency, where there are hot springs. It is generally possible
to reach this hill by land, but the water is now so high that the rock
has become an island as it used to be.

When the first two brigantines were launched on the Lake of Tezcuco by
the Spaniards, Cortes took Montezuma with him to sail upon the lake,
soon leaving the Aztec canoes far behind. They went to a Penon or rocky
hill where Montezuma preserved game for his own hunting, and not even
the highest nobility were allowed to hunt there on pain of death. The
Spaniards had a regular battue there; killing deer, hares, and rabbits
till they were tired. This Penon may have been the Penon de los Banos
which we are just passing, but was more probably a similar hill a
little further off, of larger extent, now fortified and known as El
Penon, the Hill. Both were in those days complete islands at some
distance from the shore.

Now that we are out of the canal, our Indians begin to pole us along,
thrusting their long poles to the bottom of the shallow lake, and
walking on two narrow planks which extend along the sides of the canoe
from the prow to the middle point. Four walk on each plank, each man
throwing up his pole as he gets to the end, and running back up the
middle to begin again at the prow. The dexterity with which they swing
the poles about, and keep them out of each other's way, is wonderful;
and, as seen from our end of the canoe, looks like a kind of
exaggerated quarter-staff playing, only nobody is ever hit.

The great peculiarity of the lake of Tezcuco is that it is a salt lake,
containing much salt and carbonate of soda. The water is quite brackish
and undrinkable. How it has come to be so is plain enough. The streams
from the surrounding mountains bring down salt and soda in solution,
derived from the decomposed porphyry; and as the water of the lake is
not drained off into the sea, but evaporates, the solid constituents
are left to accumulate in the lake.

In England, I think, we have no example of this; but the Dead Sea, the
Caspian, the Great Salt Lake of Utah, and even the Mediterranean, have
various salts accumulated in solution in the same way.