entering the capital. Here also, in the cuartel of the soldiers, the treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo was signed between the United States and Mexico, which closed the war of 1846-48.
Returing, pass along to the Viga boulevard, bordering the canal of the same name, and, leaving the car, hire a boat for a small sum and proceed down the canal to the Chinampas, the legendary floating gardens. The water has not a ripple, save what is made by the oars, and the big-hatted boatman gracefully swings them until you come suddenly upon the village of Santa Anita. Here you may refresh yourself with a Mexican luncheon. Lake Xochimilco, sixteen miles distant, is the main outlet of this canal. But we may come and go as oft as we will, and still find the floating gardens purely legendary. The nearest approach to a realization of the legend consists of a space of earth forming a bed for vegetables, fruits, and flowers, having on either side a ditch from which the garden is irrigated.
Humboldt says with regard to floating gardens, commonly known as the Chinampas: "There are two sorts of them, of which the one is movable and driven about by the winds, and the other fixed and attached to shore. The first, alone, merit the denomination of floating gardens.
"The ingenious invention of Chinampas appears to go back to the end of the fourteenth century. It had its origin in the extraordinary situation of a people surrounded with enemies and compelled to live in the midst of a lake, little abounding in fish, who were forced to fall upon every means of procuring subsistence. It is even probable that nature herself suggested to the Aztecs the first idea of floating gardens. On the marshy banks of the lakes Xochimilco and Chalco, the agitated water, in time of the great rises, carries away pieces of earth covered with herbs and bound together by roots. These, floating about for a long time and driven by the wind, sometimes unite into small islands. A tribe of men, too weak to defend themselves on the continent, would take advantage of these portions of ground which accident put within their reach, and of which no enemy disputed the property . . . . In proportion as the fresh-water lake has
