CHAPTER XIII.
CONTINUATION OF THE FESTIVITIES.
ON Monday, the 6th of December, the Seward party, at the invitation of Francisco Foster, Miguel Pedroreno, Major Hoyt and Mr. Toler of California, started at 10 a. m., from the Paseo de la Vija, in company with the family of President Juarez, Mrs. Romero and Mrs. Allen, Mr. and Mrs. Skelton, Doctor Manfred and daughter, Col. Geo. M. Green, Gen. Slaughter, Major Clarke, Señor Antonio Mancillas and wife, Señorita Dolores Mejia, and others, on a boat excursion up the Grand Canal towards Lake Chalco.
The party occupied five boats, the musicians another, and the wines and provisions in charge of the servants, a seventh. Each boat was about twenty feet in length, six or seven broad, and flat-bottomed. Two stout boatmen in each boat poled the flotilla up the canal against the strong current, which comes down from Lake Chalco, into Lake Tezcoco, at the rate of four miles per hour.
We passed the newly finished monument to the memory of Guatamozin, on the spot where that monarch made his final stand against Cortez, was defeated, and made prisoner—the tree at the foot of which he was roasted by the Spaniards to make him reveal his treasures, still blackened by the fire, can be seen to-day, at Chapultepec—and for twelve miles through the famous "floating gardens of Mexico." These gardens are all
