Ancimt Aqueducts.

163

Chap. 18.

No one can doubt, that a people, thus far advanced in civilizationand the useful arts, were in possession of machines of" some kind orother for raising water. Indeed the location and great population ofsome of tbeir cities required a familiär knowledge of hydraulic opera-tions to supply them with water ; and hence it would seem as lf they hadcultivated this departrnent of the arts equally with others, for some oftheir aqueducts would have done honor to Greece and Rome. Nearly allthe ancient cities of Mexico were supplied by them. We have alreadyremarked that Tlascala was furnished with abundance of baths and foun-tains—that every house in Zempoala had water—-that Tezcuco hadan aqueduct, from which every dwelling was supplied by a pipe, asin modern cities; and we may add, Iztaclapa, which contained about tenthousand houses, had its aqueduct that conveyed water from the neighbor-ing mountainSi and led it through a great number of well cultivated gar-dens. In the city of Mexico , there were several aqueducts. That of Cha-pultepec was the work of Motezuma, and also the vast stone reservoirconnected with it. When the Spaniards besieged the city they destroyedthis aqueduct. Cortez in his first letter to Charles V. mentions the springof Amilco, near Churubusco, of which the waters were conveyed to thecity “ in two large pipes, well moulded and as hard as stone, but the wa-ter never ran in more than one of them atthe same time.” We still per-ceive, says Humboldt , the remains of this great aqueduct, which was con-structed with double pipes, one of which received the water, while theywere employed in cleansing the other; but this aqueduct, he says, was in-ferior to the one at Tezcuco : of it, he observes,- “ we still admire thetraces of a great mound, which was constructed to heighten the level ofthe water.” The gardens of Motezuma were also adorned and nourish-ed with streams and fountains, and appear to have rivalled those of Asiaticmonarchs in splendor. And among the hieroglyphical Ornaments of thepyramid of Xochicalco , are heads of crocodiles spouting water, a proofthat ancient Americans were acquainted with that property of liquidsby which they find their level; and applied it not merely to fountainsand jets d’eau, but to convey water through pipes to their dwellings.

We cannot reflect on the progress which the ancient inhabitants ofMexico had made in the arts, and the magnitude and excellence of someof their hydraulic works, without regretting that no particular accounts oftheir devices for raising water ha\ r e been preserved. Of one thinghow-ever, we may be sure, that no people ever constructed such works as theydid, for the Irrigation of land, and the supply of cities, who had not pre-viously experienced the inefficiency of machines for those purposes ; norcould their agriculture have been carried to the extent it was, without theaid of them in times of drought.

‘ The machines called norias (says Humboldt ) are essential to Mexicanagriculture.’ a Does it not follow then that these, or others for the samepurpose, were equally essential, before the conquest, -when the populationof the country was so much greater, and agriculture more extensivelypractised 1 There is no doubt, he observes, that all the country from thenver Papäloapan “ Was better inhabited and better cultivated than it nowls - The swape (guimbelette) is quite common in Mexico . It is thereused as in this country for raising water from wells of moderate depth. Afriend just returned from a tour in Texas , informs us, that among theCooshattie tribe of Indians on the Trinity river, and in all the settlements,whether Indian, Creole, or modern Mexican ; in populous 1 villages or at

a New Spain, translated by Black, Vol. ii, 458.