This is the VALLEY OF MEXICO, 1748.* main portion, reduced, of the map in Joseph Francisco de Cuevas' Mexico y su Valle (Mexico, 1748), made by Carlos de Siguenza. The cartography of Mexico, city, lakes, and valley, has been elsewhere sketched (ante, I. 143: II. 375, 378). The maps and supposed topography of the time of the Conquest has been represented in the map of Cortes (ante, II. 364), and the compiled sketch of Helps (II. 369). Other of the views of its relations to the lakes in the sixteenth century may be seen in the sketch in Bordone's Isolario, 1547 (lib. i. p. x), and in Ramusio (reproduced, ante, II. 379). There is a "Pourtrait et Description de la begun to drain the encroaching waters in 1607.1 The increase of wealth brought its natural evils, - pernicious luxury in the upper, and vice in the lower classes. Robbers infested the highways. Amid it all, there had 1 Again, in 1627 and 1629, new efforts at engineering were made. Large numbers of people perished in these inundations, and those that fled from the city swelled the populations of Puebla and other places. See Bancroft, Mexico, iii. 96, for references. grande Cité de Temistitan, ou Tenuctatlan, ou selon aucuns Messico ou Mexico," measuring 6 inches square, in Antonio Du Pinet's Plantes, Pourtraites et Descriptions de plusieurs Villes et Forteresses tant de l'Europe, Asie et Afrique, que des Indes et terres neuves (Lyon, 1564). A relic of the engineering efforts to save the city from inundation exists in maps of a Dutch engineer, much in its service from 1613 to 1640 (Bancroft's Mexico, iii. 10, 86). A sketch of the valley by Boot exists in manuscript in Harvard College library, Regionis circa lacum Mexicanum descriptio ab Adriano Boot, and is reproduced further on. There is much information, with plans of the various efforts to drain the valley of Mexico, in the Boletin of the Instituto Nacional de Geografía (Mexico, 1852, etc.). There is a map in Gottfriedt's Newe Well, p. 607. Of the maps of the eighteenth century, we have a common map, given elsewhere, from the Coreal of 1722 (ante, I. 145), which continued to be copied for many years, and will be found with little change in Johann Friedrich Schröter's Algemeine Geschichte der Länder und Völker von America (Halle, 1753), vol. ii., in Prévost's Voyages (xii. 325), and in the German Allg. Hist. der Reisen, 1755; but still another map is also found in these same works (respectively xii. 441, and xiii. no. 15). The map of Cuevas, of about the same time (1748), is given herewith. The map of New Spain given in Robertson's America (1773) is by Kitchin, and it has a marginal map of the city of the usual type. Later we find a good plan of the city in Chappe d'Autoroche's Voyage to California to observe the Transit of Venus (London, 1778). An attempt seems to have been made to make some considerable advance on all these efforts in the maps which Tomas Lopez was instrumental in making known or devising in 1783-85. One of them is a large map in four sheets, Plano geométrico de la imperial, noble y leal ciudad de Mexico, por Don Ignacio de Castera, año de 1776. Dale á luz Don Tomas Lopez, año de 1785. The other is a Mapa de las lagunas que circundan à Mexico por D. Tomas Lopez, which was prepared for the history of Solis. There is a Mapa de las cercanas de México por D. Juan Lopez, 1785. Uricoechea (Mapoteca Colombiana, Londres, 1860) does not note this, but he gives A Plan of the City of Mexico by Lt. Col. Count Diego Garcia, 1793. (Cf. a French ed., 1824, and that in Bullock's Six Months in Mexico, London, 1825, 2d ed.) A Calendario map of 1800 is given herewith. A decided improvement appeared in the Neue Charte des Thales von Mexico, based by Jablo Oelmans on the surveys of Louis Martin in 1804, and of Joaquin Velasquez in 1807, and upon the astronomical observations of Humboldt, which was published at Weimar (1810, 1814, etc.), of which a portion is given herewith from the English edition. Arrowsmith also included it in his New Map of Mexico (Lond., 1810). The war with the United States (1840) caused new surveys by the American engineers Lieut. M. L. Smith and Captain Hardcastle. Cf. U. S. Senate Ex. Doc., 30th Cong., 2d session, i. no. 19, and 31st Cong., 1st session, vi. no. 11, and reproduction in Brantz Mayer's Mexico, Aztec, etc., ch. xiii.; and the map reproduced ante, II. p. 374. In 1862 the French engineers made a new study of the valley, during Maximilian's career, and their map is shown ante, II. 375. Cf. the map showing the relations of the town to the present lakes given in W. H. Bishop's Old Mexico and her lost provinces (N. Y., 1883). An early view of Mexico from Montanus is given ante, II. 377. The views of the eighteenth century generally puzzle one to reconcile them with the descriptions which we have. Cf. that in Hermann Moll's West Indies; that in Schröter's Alg. Gesch. von America (Halle, 1753), ii. 16. Supposable views of what the town was before the Conquest and after it was rebuilt are in some of the chief descriptive geographical repositories of this period, as in Prévost's Voyages, and the German corresponding Allg. Hist. der Reisen (Leipzig, 1755, vol. xiii.). They do not convince one of their genuineness. Of the later town there are more trustworthy views, and such appear frequently in books of travel, like Ward's, Bullock's, etc. We must look in Ortelius, De Bry, and Herrera for the principal maps of New Spain in the sixteenth century (ante, II. pp. 359, 392, 472). By the middle of the seventeenth century we begin to have the maps of Sanson, Blaeuw, and then come those of Coronelli; and for the beginning of the eighteenth century we have De Fer, Delisle, and Homann. The map of the bishoprics which Joseph Antonio de Alzate y Ramirez constructed in 1768 is given in Lorenzana's Cortes, and is reproduced ante, II. p. 408. Maps by D'Anville and Tomas Lopez were the other most important ones of that century. With those of Arrowsmith (London, 1810), Humboldt (Paris, 1811), and Delamarche a new series begins, and later come the maps of Tardieu, Brué, Dufour, Ward (1827, who complains in his Mexico in 1827 that few places have had their latitude and longitude definitely settled), Mariano Torrente (in his Revolucion Hispano-Americana, Madrid, 1830), not to name later ones. Cf. Uricoechea, under Mexico, nos. 12, 13, 14, 17, 18, 19, 20, 33, 36, 52, 53, 56, 71, 74, 78, 79, 96, 104, 113, 116, 138, 175, 203. come an issue between the Viceroy Gelves and the archbishop, and the secular ruler (1624) had gone to the wall.1 Not so easy a matter was it for the prelate to deal with the Jesuits, who, despite their adversaries, grew in numbers, and labored and strove as Jesuits will. Reproduction of a map in the annual Calendario Manual y Guia de forasteros en México para el año de 1800.-KEY: A, Laguna de Tescuco. B, Idem Chalco. C, Idem de Xochimilco. D, Idem de San Christobal. E, Idem de Zumpango. F, Idem de Xalcocan. G, Idem de Oculma. H, Refuerzo para estrechar las aguas. I, Real Desague. J, Union del Desague con el Rio Gueguetoca. K, Comunicacion para el Desague de las Lagunas. L, Loma de los Abrojos. M, Idem de la Visitacion. N, Laguna. Cf. maps in the British Museum noted in Calvo, Rec. des Traités, x. 368. A serious obstruction to the shipment of treasure to Spain came in the capture of Jamaica by Cromwell's expedition in 1655, and the establishment there of a nest of English pirates; for an attempt (1657) of the Spaniards to drive the English out completely failed. So the buccaneers continued to ravage the Gulf coast; and even after a treaty with Spain in 1670, the governor of Jamaica, off and on, was suspected of giving clandestine aid to the marauders. In time, banding together irrespective of nationality, the freebooters controlled fleets and even armies. It was such a joint force - *From the map in the English translation (Black's) of Humboldt's Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain (London, 1822). The map "was sketched on the spot in 1804 by Don Louis Martin, and corrected in 1807 from the trigonometrical operations of Don Joaquin Velasquez, and the astronomical operations and barometrical measurements of Humboldt, by Jabbo Oltmanns." KEY: "The canal of Huehuetoca conducts the waters of the Rio de Guantitlan by the Rio de Tula or Moctezuma and the Rio de Panuco to the Atlantic. The canals of Zumpango (D, F) and San Christobal (B, F, C) were added in 1796 and 1798. The small canal of Vertideros (D, E) serves to throw the Desague dry. The canals (A, B) were projected to remove the danger to which the City of Mexico is still exposed of inundations from the south and east" (Humboldt). |