took place here in 1882, the nearness of the
water to the surface of the earth prevented the city from the
destruction which was imminent. This certainly may have been a correct
deduction.

As the city is in the lowest part of the valley, and all the lakes
except that of Texcoco are above its level, there is no positive safety
from inundation at any hour. The lake just named is said to be only
about two feet below the level of the city plaza. As the valley is
entirely closed by a wall of mountains, there is no natural outlet for
these extensive waters. Lake Zumpango, with a surface ten miles square,
is twenty-nine feet higher than the average level of the city of Mexico.
Such drainage as is contemplated must tap and carry away these lakes
also, to obviate the danger of their flooding the capital on any
extraordinary emergency, else it will be of little avail.

At this writing there is quite a "boom" in land in the neighboring
suburbs of San Angel and Tacubaya, which present most desirable building
localities, and are free from the prominent objections of the capital
itself. The latter suburb already contains nearly ten thousand
inhabitants. It is situated on a hillside, sloping towards the
northwest. In its present form the town is quite modern, but from the
earliest times there has been a village here. After the great inundation
of 1629, the project of making this the site of the capital was
seriously considered. There is already a small alameda and a miniature
plaza in Tacubaya. San Angel is a couple of miles further away from the
city, and is also built on a hillside, amid orchards and gardens. The
deserted and ancient Carmelite monastery is a feature of this place.
Both Tacubaya and San Angel can be reached almost any hour of the day
from Mexico by tramway, the cars starting from the Plaza Mayor. It was
noticed that considerable building for domestic purposes was going on in
both of these places, but principally at Tacubaya, and it is thought the
citizens of Mexico are "hedging," as it were, by providing themselves
with pleasant and healthful homes in anticipation of some sort of
collapse which must sooner or later befall the business portions of the
capital. There is universal complaint regarding the high price of rents
in the city for respectable residences, quite a percentage having been
added to the rates heretofore charged each succeeding year. Drainage is
more and more seriously thought of by cutting an outl