There is the Castle of Chapultepec
surrounded by trees, the beautiful and venerable _ahuahuetes_, or
cypresses, surmounting its hill--the Aztec "Hill of the Grasshoppers"
where Montezuma's palace was, and where stands the fine structure
reared by the viceroys, now the official residence of the Presidents of
Mexico of to-day. And there lies Guadalupe gleaming in the sun, with
its famous shrine of miraculous visions and cures--the Lourdes of
Mexico. There lie Tacubaya, San Angel, and Tlalpam, luxurious and
aristocratic suburban homes of Mexico's wealthy citizens, surrounded by
their exuberant vegetation on fertile hillsides mid soft and soothing
colour and balmy atmosphere. From the pine-clad hills whereon we stand,
which form the rim of this singular valley, the whole panorama is open
to the view, of lakes and flat plain, the latter crossed by the dusty
roads cut by centuries of traffic through the white _adobe_ soil,
giving access to the surrounding villages and the serried lines of the
_maguey_ plantations, or the chess-board chequers of dark green
_alfalfa_, lighter barley, and yellow _maiz_. And from plain and dusty
road, and vivid _hacienda_ and city domes and whitened walls, our gaze
rises to the clear-cut, snowy crest of "The Sleeping Woman,"
Ixtaccihuatl, in her gleaming porcelain sheen, where she hoards the
treasures of the snow, reminding us of the peaks of the great South
American Cordillera, to whose system she and her consort Popocatepetl
are but a more recent addition. Like legendary sentinels of a vanished
past, they seem to overwatch the valley.

The Valley of Mexico is a flat plain, in the lowest portion of which
the City of Mexico is situated, two or three miles from Lake Texcoco.
The plain consists of lands barren and lands cultivated, marshes and
swamps, all intersected by numerous streams falling into the lakes, as
well as irrigation and drainage canals, whilst on the rising ground
which appears in places the volcanic understructure is laid bare, often
in the form of great lava sheets. The group of lakes have been
elsewhere described in these pages. Lake Texcoco, whose shores are now
distant from the city, is a dreary waste of brackish water with
scarcely any fish-life, inhabited by water-fowl at certain seasons.
During the period of overflow its rising waters cover many added square
miles of ground, but in the dry season the water recedes, leaving
saline-covered marshes of desolate aspect. Lakes Cha