A Trip to Mexico Author:Forbes Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAP. III. THE CITY OF MEXICO. SITE HOUSES AND STREETS PUBLIC BUILDING!) -- CATHEDRAL -- PALACE MUSEUM COSTUMES MINERIA -- CONVENTS -- THK ... more » HOST AMUSEMENTS THEATRE PA8EO CLUB -- CHAPt'LTEPEC TACUBAYA MEXICANS AT HOMK -- LOWER CLASSES -- ROBBERS -- ROBBERIES ASSASSINATION SANTA Gl'ADALUPE -- SAN AUGU8TIN. I remained for three weeks in the city of Mexico, and had therefore ample time for seeing all that is interesting in it. The first week Jones and myself remained at the Hotel Bazaar, a very good establishment, with a French restaurant attached to it, the whole kept by M. Arago, a brother of the Parisian astronomer. The last fortnight of my stay I removed to the house of the friends whom we had left behind at Xalapa, and who had only then arrived in Mexico. Mexico is a large city, with upwards of 150,000 inhabitants. It lies in N. Lat. 19'25, and W. Long. 101, and has an elevation of 7426 feet above the sea. It is built on the precise site of the ancientTenochtitlan, the capital of Montezuma, captured and destroyed by Cortez, in the year 1521. The ancient city, as is well known, was surrounded by the lake which has now retreated about a league from it. It was only accessible by causeways, stretching to it in different directions from the shore, some of them being no less than six miles in length. These causeways still exist, and constitute raised roadways running through the half- marshy soil that once formed the bottom of the lake. The modern city retains much of the plan of its predecessor -- the same long, wide, and perfectly straight streets, the same squares, and the same sites of the public buildings. As the city was rebuilt by Cortes, only two years after its destruction., and while the lake was yet undiminished, the original canal...« less