orish waterworks is not to be seen. I mean
the water-columns which are such a feature in the country round
Palermo, and in other places where the system of irrigation introduced
by the Moorish invaders is still kept up. These are square pillars
twenty or thirty feet high, with a cistern at the top of each, into
which the water from the higher level flowed, and from which other
pipes carried it on; the sole object of the whole apparatus being to
break the column of water, and reduce the pressure to the thirty or
forty feet which the pipes of earthenware would bear.

This subject of irrigation is very interesting with reference to the
future of Mexico. We visited two or three country-houses in the
plateaux, where the gardens are regularly watered by artificial
channels, and the result is a vegetation of wonderful exuberance and
beauty, converting these spots into oases in the desert. On the lower
levels of the tierra templada where the sugar-cane is cultivated, a
costly system of water-supply has been established in the haciendas
with the best results. Even in the plains of Mexico and Puebla, the
grain-fields are irrigated to some small degree. But notwithstanding
this progress in the right direction, the face of the country shows the
most miserable waste of one of the chief elements of the wealth and
prosperity of the country, the water.

In this respect, Spain and the high lands of Mexico may be compared
together. There is no scarcity of rain in either country, and yet both
are dry and parched, while the number and size of their torrent-beds
show with what violence the mountain-streams descend into lakes or
rivers, rather agents of destruction than of benefit to the land.
Strangely enough, both countries have been in possession of races who
understood that water was the very life-blood of the land, and worked
hard to build systems of arteries to distribute it over the surface. In
both countries, the warlike Spaniards overcame these races, and
irrigating works already constructed were allowed to fall to ruin.

When the Moriscos were expelled from their native provinces of
Andalusia and Granada, their places were but slowly filled up with
other settlers, so that a great part of their aqueducts and
watercourses fell into decay within a few years. These new colonists,
moreover, came from the Northern provinces, where the Moorish system of
culture was little understood; and, incredible as it may seem, though
they must hav