At the time of the Conquest of Mexico the Spaniards let the native irrigating-works fall into decay; and they took still more active measures to deprive the land of its necessary water, by their indiscriminate destruction of the forests on the hills that surround the plains.  When the trees were cut down, the undergrowth soon perished, and the soil which had served to check the descending waters in their course was soon swept away.  During the four rainy months, each heavy shower sends down a flood along the torrent-bed which flows into a river, and so into the ocean, or, as in the Mexican valley, into a salt lake, where it only serves to injure the surrounding land.  In both cases it runs away in utter waste.

In later years the Spanish owners of the soil had the necessity of the system impressed upon them by force of circumstances; and large sums were spent upon the construction of irrigating channels, even in the outlying states of the North.

In the American territory recently acquired from Mexico history has repeated itself in a most curious way.  We learn from Froebel, the German traveller, that the new American settlers did not take kindly to the system of irrigation which they found at work in the country.  They were not used to it, and it interfered with their ideas of liberty by placing restrictions upon their doing what they pleased on their own land.  So they actually allowed many of the water-canals to fall into ruins.  Of course they soon began to find out their mistake, and are probably investing heavily in water-supply by this time.  We ought not to be too severe upon the Spaniards of the sixteenth century for an economical mistake which we find the Americans falling into under similar circumstances in the nineteenth.

CHAPTER VII.

CUERNAVACA.  TEMISCO.  XOCHICALCO.

[Illustration:  SPANISH-MEXICAN SADDLE AND ITS APPURTENANCES.]

Much too soon, as we thought, the day came when we had arranged to leave Tezcuco and return to Mexico, to prepare for a journey into the tierra caliente.  On the evening of our return to the capital there was a little earthquake, but neither of us noticed it; and thus we lost our one chance, and returned to England without having made acquaintance with that peculiar sensation.

The purchase of horses and saddles and other equipments for our journey, gave us an opportunity of poking about into out-of-the-way corners of the city, and seeing some new phases of Mexican life; and certainly we made the most of the chance.  We made acquaintance with horse-dealers, who brought us horses to try in the courtyard of the great house of our friends the English merchants in the Calle Seminario, and there showed off their paces, walking, pacing, and galloping.  To trot is considered a disgusting vice in a Mexican horse; and the universal substitute for it here is the paso, a queer shuffling run, first, the