It was not possible to roll along the broad causeway leading to Mexico,–that causeway made, if I am correctly informed, by the ancient Indians, and not think of the days of old, when along that magnificent road marched the hosts of Cortez in their pride and power–the gallant Spanish chivalry – while before their wondering eyes rose the city of ten thousand enchantments, the unspeakably beautiful Tenochtitlan, like the capital of the Eastern King of the Genii, spreading over and covering its beautiful islands, with its palaced streets, that swarmed with gay canoes–its temples, its groves, its floating gardens, its crystal seas, covered with barques (those majestic lakes which are now so diminished and reduced), and all its unimaginable beauties of art and nature,–all that unrivalled valley-world which, shut out from the rest of earth, scarcely seems to belong to that earth–fenced and walled round by its glorious giant mountains, leaning their snowyhelmed foreheads against the stars, and reflecting themselves in those silver waters, as if they repented of leaving such a scene of enchantment, and thus returned and haunted it ever.