appears to mc that to understand them better I should describe Mexico, which is where this great city,
Cortes
Describes
Mexico to
Charles V.
some others of which I have spoken, and the principal seat of Montezuma's dominion are. This province is ciroular, and completely surrounded by high and rugged mountains. Its plain is perhaps seventy leagues in circumference, in which there are two lakes,[1] occupying almost all of it, for a canoe travels fifty leagues within their borders, and one of these lakes is of fresh water, and the other larger one is salt. The lakes are divided from one another on one side by a small chain of very high hills, in the middle of one end of this plain, except for a strait between these hills and the high mountains; the strait is about a bow shot across. Communication between one lake and the other, and between the cities, and the other towns round about, is by means of canoes, with no need of going by land. The large salt lake rises and falls in its tides like the sea; its waters, whenever it rises, falling into the fresh-water lake as rapidly as though it were a great river; and when it ebbs, the fresh water then runs into the salt lake.
This great city of Temixtitan is built on the salt lake, and from the mainland to the city is a distance of two leagues, from any side from which you enter. It has four approaches by means of artificial causeways, two cavalry lances in width. The city is as large as Seville or Cordoba. Its streets (I speak of the principal ones) are very broad and straight, some of these, and all the others, are one half land, and the other half water on which they go about in canoes. All the streets haev openings at regular intervals, to let the water flow frmo one to the other, and at all of these openings, some of
- ↑ The lakes of Chalco and Texcoco, the first being of fresh, and the second, of salt water.
