New Britain herald., 1916-09-28

and the See America First cam paign is made to embrace the won derful scenic beauties of the southern republic, one of the most popular re- sorts for tourists will probably be '"The Venice of the Valley" graphi cally described in a communication from Walter Hough to the National Geographic society, part of which is issued today in the following bulletin:
 "One of the pleasurable experiences among those that delight the traveller in Mexico is a visit to the home of the Aztec lake dwellers. Much of the charm of the great Valley of Mexico, where they live, Is due to the stretches of water among the trees and verdant fields in a landscape framed in beau tiful mountains and bathed with clear est air of heaven.
 Their lakes-Texcoco, Xochimilco, Zumpango and Chalco, do not reveal themselves except from the high mountains encircling the valley. They are shallow bodies of water in the midst of extensive marshes unap- proachable and lacking the effect of our lakes with their definite shore lines. For this reason they have been highways of civilized commerce, nor
  shallow waters; but they were from these very hindrances destined to be jealous mothers of ancient and re- markable states, whose people, pro- tected in the fens, dug-out canals and developed an indigenous commerce and transportation to the fullest ex- tent.
 Long before Cortez came the In dians of the valley worked in the boggy lake lands and dug canals hither and thither-main canals be- tween the lakes and to the great city of Tenochtitlan and smaller canals between the fields. Through this maze of waterways, then as now, they sent their boats and in the fens built their matched houses.
 "Pere Sahagun, the Franciscan, re- cords that the City of Mexico is like another Venice and the people them selves are comparable to the Venet- ians in urbanity and savoir.' This was written in the sixteenth century, but in the lapse of several hundred years the city's wonderful water en- vironment has become dry ground, and the seeker for lake dwellers will have to look farther afield in the entrancing valley of the sky.
 '"The way to the present Aztec Venice, which bears the name of Xochimilco in the field of flowers,' is through one of these ancient canals "a prehistoric water road from Tenochtitlan to the capital and seat of one of the group of seven Aztec tribes which long ago came from re- mote Aztlan to the rich Valley of Mexico.
 'The life on the canal, vivid and picturesque, is as striking now as it was then; it may even be suspected that the change from that time to this has not been very great. It is hard to get a star to the land of the fens in more ways than one-the negotiations for the passage in a barge with boat men who display the characteristics of that tribe known the world over; and the conflicting claims also of all the costumes incidents, shipping and so forth, of the boiling, squirming kaleidoscopic canal and shore popula- tion on it's multifarious quests bewilder the beholder and make him forget that he is on a journey to see the lake dwellers in their primitive homes. Tardily, then the barge comes into the clear pool in front of the medieval
 
 must go under low bridge and where the old-time toll collector, armed with a pike, could threaten the recalcitrant without much effort.
 Beyond the gateway begin more vistas of & new world. On this canal, bordered with trees and spanned with quaint bridges, is a perfect stream of craft, from the slender dug-out cha lOupe to the square-bo-- --ed flatboat, hurrying on with everything to feed, repair and adorn the great city. Freight is of all descriptions but one looks curiously on the small bundles of grass and other green forage for animal feed, the pulkue barrels, veg etables and flowers. The Indian bcat- men, clad in white cotton shirt and trousers, are working with a will, sometimes wading in the canal and drawing the heavy-laden boats after them; and, alas! returning to their paradise, woman piloting her hus- band, who is the worse for pulque.
 "F1otsam and jetsam in the canal are vagrant bulbs and flowers of water hyacinth, a wicked, beautiful plant, whose reproductivity makes men work to keep it down, but here it has met It's match and is made to be useful for the Aztecs throw great masses of it upon a strip of bog to the thickness of a foot or more. The water hya- cinth is provided with large cellular floats, a natural provision for it's des- semination, which has made it an ob- struction to navigation in some of our southern rivers.
 Upon this bed of floats the natives spread a layer of muck, dredged from the bottom of the canals. Perhaps before the plant floats have decayed these gardens may drift away should the water rise. Even now portions of the lake on square miles of vegeta- tion cover the surface like the 'sudd' of the Nile, and the canal roads have