Page:About Mexico - Past and Present.djvu/108

continent. The floating gardens of Mexico, so often described, were light rafts of woven reeds on which turf was heaped. Through the matted vegetable growth thus produced willow stakes were driven, fastening all together, and in time the roots of plants reached down through the soil into the shallow water of the lake. Such gardens, linked together on the borders of the city, extended its boundaries far beyond its original limits. The terraced roofs of the houses were also airy gardens abloom with flowering plants, and even with small shrubbery. The whole city seemed devoted to floriculture. Out of this wilderness of beauty arose hundreds of towers, with many open squares surrounded with well-paved corridors and handsome public buildings. As every male among the Aztecs was born a warrior, and as the army was almost constantly in the field, the house-building of this nation of banditti was mostly done by levies on subjugated tribes. They put up houses without a nail or a hammer. Hungry Fox, chief of the Tezcucans, employed a force of two hundred thousand men in building and furnishing a government house. The same great chief had in the centre of a magnificent park a country-house which, judging from its ruins still remaining, must well have compared with some of the finest royal residences in Europe. Enough can still be found to prove that art has sadly degenerated in Mexico since Aztec rule declined. With the despotic power of the tribal council, the greatest tyranny of custom prevailed throughout Mexico. Every act of civil and of common life was regulated for the people so rigorously that "the course of improvement," says one writer, "was chained as completely as in China or Hindostan."