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Some of them, as the Mokis and Lagunas, are organized in gentes, and governed by a council of chiefs, each village being independent and self-governing. They observe the same law of hospitality universally practiced by the Northern Indians. Upon this subject, Mr.
Or here had lived the Moquis, or the Zunians, or the Lagunas, before they sought refuge from the red tribes of the north upon the buttes south of the Sierra del Carrizo. Here at all events had once palpitated a civilization which was now a ghost. "This is to be our home for a little while," said Thurstane to Clara. "Will you dismount? I will run in and turn out the snakes, if there are any.
And I may now conclude this long survey of the canals and lagunas of Mexico, by saying that it is a wise provision of Providence that all bodies of water that have no outlet are found to contain a considerable infusion of salt, otherwise their accumulations of decaying matter would be such that mankind could not live in their vicinity. This valley is an illustration of that truth.
It is situated on a small island in the center of the Bombon laguna, and has an altitude of 550 feet above sea level. Its form is conical, and the rock is composed of basalt feldspar with a small quantity of augite. The crater is supposed to be 232 feet deep. Its sides are almost vertical, and there are two steaming lagunas at its bottom.
In this valley are the two ponds, or lagunas, of Zumpango and San Cristobal, the highest waters of Mexico; and in it also is the half of the Tezcuco, which is the lowest laguna of the valleys.
But the greatest anomaly of this geological puzzle is, that water-ponds are found in their very midst even among their highest ridges and this water not occasional, as from rains, but lying in "lagunas," with reeds, rushes, and nymphae growing in them, to attest that the water is permanent! The very last place where water might be expected to make a lodgment.
"I remember the day when the first sheep came," he said, in the manner of one who begins a set narration. "In the year of '91 the rain came, more, more, more, until the earth was full and the excess made lagunas on the plain.
They were shallow lakelets, called lagunas, each occupying an area of three or four hundred acres, with some open water and the rest overgrown with bright green sedges in dense beds, called pajonales, and immense beds of bulrushes, called juncales.
It is probable, however, that these were built of adobe bricks or of timber. The city very likely was much older than the Aztec empire. A Spanish officer named Ordaz ascended Mount Popocatapetl, and one thing he saw was “the Valley of Mexico, with its city, its lagunas and islands, and its scattered hamlets, a busy throng of life being every where visible.”
All the lagunas, canals, and ditches that have been described are navigated by small scows that draw but a few inches of water, which are the medium of an extensive internal commerce. Through the lagunas and canal of Chalco come from Cuatla all the supplies of the products of the hot country for the city and surrounding region. This commerce exceeds the whole foreign trade of the republic.
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