Extract from Humboldt’s New Spain.

Brief description of the city of mexico.

Mexico has been very much embellished since the residence of the Abbe Chappe there in 1769.

The edifice destined to the school of mines, for which the richest individuals of the country furnished a sum of more than three million of francs, would adorn the principal places of Paris or London.

Two great palaces [hotels] were lately constructed by Mexican artists, pupils of the academy of Fine Arts of the capital.

One of these palaces, in the quarter della Traspana, exhibits in the interior of the court a very beautiful oval perystyle, of coupled columns.

The traveller justly admires a vast circumference paved with porphyry flag, and enclosed with an iron railing, richly ornamented with bronze, containing an equestrian statue of King Charles the Fourth, placed on a pedestal of Mexican marble, in the midst of the Plaza Major of Mexico, opposite the cathedral and the viceroy’s palace.

However it must be agreed that notwithstanding the progress of the arts within these last thirty years, it is much less from the grandeur and beauty of the monuments, than from the breadth and straightness of the streets, and much less from its edifices than from its uniform regularity, its extent and position, that the capital of New Spain attracts the admiration of Europeans.

From a strange concurrence of circumstances, I have seen successivly, within a very short space of time, Lima, Mexico, Philadelphia, Washington, Paris, Rome, Naples, and the largest cities of Germany.

By comparing together impressions which follow in rapid succession, we are enabled to rectify any opinion which we may have too easily adopted.

Notwithstanding such unavoidable comparisons, of which several, one would think, must have proved disadvantageous to the capital of Mexico, it has left in me a recollection of grandeur which I principally attribute to the majestic character of its situation and the surrounding scenery.

124,800l. sterling.

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See chap. VII.

This colossal statue was executed at the expense of the Marquis de Branciforte, formerly viceroy of Mexico, brother-in-law to the Prince of Peace.

It weighs 450 quintals, and was modelled, founded and placed by the same artist, M. Tolsa, whose name deserves a distinguished place in the history of Spanish sculpture.

The merits of this man of genius can only be appreciated by those who know the difficulties with which the execution of these great works of art are attended even in civilized Europe.

From the plan of the City of Washington, and from the magnificence of its capitol of which I only saw a part completed, the Federal City will undoubtedly one day be a much finer city than Mexico.

Philadelphia has also the same mode of construction.

The alleys of platanus, acacia, and populous heterophylla, which adorn its streets, almost give it a rural beauty.

The vegetation of the banks of the Potomac and Delaware is also richer than what we find 2,300 metres (7,500 feet) of elevation on the ridge of the Mexican Cordilleras.

But Washington and Philadelphia will always look like European cities.

They will not strike the eyes of the traveller with that peculiar, I may say that exotic character which belongs to Mexico, Santa Fe de Bogata, Quito, and all the tropical capitals, constructed at an elevation as high or higher than the passage of the great St. Bernard.

In fact, nothing can present a more rich and varied appearance than the valley, when, in a fine summer morning, the sky without a cloud, and of that deep azure which is peculiar to the dry and refined air of high mountains, we transport ourselves to the top of one of the towers of the cathedral of Mexico, or ascend the hill of Chapoltepec.

A beautiful vegetation surrounds this hill.

Old cypress trunks of more than 15 & 16 metres in circumference, raise their naked head above those of the Scinus, which resemble in their appearance the weeping willows of the east.

From the centre of this solitude, the summit of the porphyritical rock of Chapoltepec, the eye sweeps over a vast plain of carefully cultivated fields, which extend to the very feet of the collossal mountains covered with perpetual snow.

The city appears as if washed by the waters of the lake of Tezcuco, whose basin, surrounded with villages and hamlets, brings to mind the most beautiful lakes of the mountains of Switzerland.

Large avenues of elms and poplars lead in every direction to the capital; and two aqueducts constructed over arches of very great elevation, cross the plain and exhibit an appearance equally agreeable and interesting.

The magnificent convent of Nuestra Sonora de Gaudaloupe, appears joined to the mountains of Tepeyacac, among ravines, which shelter a few date yucca trees.

Towards the south, the whole tract between San Angel, Tacabaya, and San Augustin de las Cuevas, appears an immense garden of Orange, Peach, Apple, Cherry, and other European fruit trees.

This beautiful cultivation forms a singular contrast with the wild appearance of the naked mountains which enclose the valley, among which the famous volcanoes of La Puebla, Popocatepetl, and Iztaccihuatl are the most distinguished.— The first of these forms an enormous cone, of which the crater, continually inflamed and throwing up smoke and ashes, opens in the midst of eternal snows.

Los Ahuahuetes.

Cupressus disticha Lin.

49 and 52 feet.

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