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The extensive springs of pure water that issue from beneath this immense rock have kept them flourishing in the midst of a tequisquite valley. Long gray threads of Spanish moss hang pendent from the extremity of their limbs and cover the lower leaves.
The surface-water with which it is saturated is in part fresh, and in other parts tequisquite; that is, where the waters have a current, they are fresh; but where they remain from year to year discharging their volume only by evaporation, then they become infused with the saline properties of the soil, and all about them is marked with barrenness.
Even in the city of Mexico itself, a couple of feet of digging in its alluvial foundation brings you to the water-level in the dry season, and seventy or eighty yards of boring does not carry you beyond the perceptible influence of tequisquite.
But this by no means removes the difficulty, for then, as now, the waters of the southern laguna flowed into Tezcuco, conveying with them the infinitesimal infusion of tequisquite that had instilled itself into the Chalco.
The Appearance of the Virgin Mary at Tezcuco. The Causeways of Mexico. The ride to San Angel has this advantage over all others out of Mexico, that the road is nearly all the way upon dry land, thus presenting a pleasant contrast to the gloominess of all the others, except the Tacuba road. There is less of stagnant water, and little appearance of tequisquite.
But, aside from the rules of canal construction, there is an important sanitary question involved. The present ditches in the middle of the streets, though they have a perceptible current, and a slight infusion of tequisquite, are an intolerable nuisance, and have a deleterious effect upon the public health.
The shores of Tezcuco approach the hill in the wet season, leaving but a narrow margin for the road, but in the dry season this margin is greatly enlarged. I have already explained the composition of tequisquite, and the manner of its production; here it was lying in courses, or spots, as it had been left by the receding and drying up of the water during the present dry season.
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