File:Our next-door neighbor- a winter in Mexico (1875) (14577718948).jpg

Identifier: ournextdoorneigh00have (find matches)
Title: Our next-door neighbor: a winter in Mexico
Year: 1875 (1870s)
Authors: Haven, Gilbert, Bishop, 1821-1880
Subjects: Mexico -- Description and travel
Publisher: New York : Harper & Brothers
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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all the bewilder-ment of Cologne, the head of crooked towns. The streets are asdirty and the huts as poor as it is possible for either to be, and wegladly reach the gate and touch the open fields. Level and lowlies the land. The road is hard, though pulpy. The canal is soon struck. This is the feeder of the city. Alongits watery way for five hundred years, perhaps more, have the peo-ple and the produce of the region come to town. It is the oldestcanal in the world, unless China ranks it, which is doubtful. It isnot a canal for horses ; the boats are pushed along by the boat-men. Garden truck is the chief freight, though green lucern grass-es, for the horses of the town, frequently load heavily the littlecraft. Pleasure and carriage boats ply the waters, long, narrow, A QUESTION FOR ANTIQUARIANS. 227 covered with awnings, and well patronized by the people on theline. These canals were just as busy when Cortez first came overyonder pass as to-day. He saw and noted their traffic when he
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THE CANAL. marched along their side, the invited guest of Montezuma, to thedoomed city. How many ages they had then been employed heknew not; no one knows. Along their sides spring up villages, as the Erie Canal has made 228 OUR XEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. towns, great and small, beside its banks. Some of these villagesrise to the dignity of towns; others are mere halting-places for theboats. But what made the canal ? Who and when, may be beyond ourreach. What did it is more apprehensible. It was the floatingisland. That curiosity of this country is a veritable fact. As soonalmost as you leave the wall, you perceive these novel lands. Theridgeway of the canal is wide enough for several horses. On oneside is the long ditch, on the other many short ones, cut straight,not more than a rod or two apart, filled with water, and inclosingplats of ground of about a quarter of an acre. The ditch, cut squareabout these plats, allows the proprietor, lessee, or laborer to geteasily around his lot in his b

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