File:Mexico, the wonderland of the South (1909) (14781722315).jpg

Identifier: mexicowonderland1909cars (find matches)
Title: Mexico, the wonderland of the South
Year: 1909 (1900s)
Authors: Carson, William English, 1870-
Subjects: Mexico -- Description and travel
Publisher: New York, The Macmillan company
Contributing Library: Brown University Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brown University

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and it is theoldest and in many respects the most interesting part ofthe Mexican capital. To some extent it resembles the Islede la Cite in Paris; for in Aztec times it was entirely sur-rounded by water, and here stood the temples and palaceswhich the Spaniards destroyed, replacing them with thecathedral and various public buildings. In the great plazathe life of the city had its centre in early Spanish times,the market and the principal shops were here, and it was thepublic promenade and place of recreation. To-day, withits quaint, time-worn buildings and its memories of thepast, it has suffered a modern invasion in the shape of thestreet-cars which start from it. I felt a curious impressionof this juxtaposition of the modern and the mediaeval asI stood beneath the giant walls of the sixteenth-centurycathedral and listened to the persistent clanging of thestreet-car gongs. For there is one feature which dominates the plaza andvividly recalls the days when Spain was a mighty world- 86
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THE SIGHTS OF THE CAPITAL 87 empire and Queen Elizabeth ruled the destinies of England.That feature is the great cathedral built on the site of thewonderful teocalli or temple, dedicated to Huitzilopochtli,the Aztec War-god and patron deity of the ancient city.Here in the temple centre stood the famous Stone of Sacri-fice, upon which tens of thousands of human victims wereslaughtered, their breasts sliced open with obsidian knives,their hearts torn out and burned in the holy of holies inhonor of the terrible deity. Close at hand were the palacesof the Emperor Montezuma. It was typical of the splendid arrogance of the Catholicconquerors that Cortes should have seized upon the theatri-cal idea of building his great stone apotheosis of his faithon a site reeking with memories of pagan foulness. It wasin 1573, in the reign of Phihp II, that the first stone of thegreat church was laid. The soil was of such a marshynature that the builders had great difficulties with which tocontend. These

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