while these latter generally adopted the high-peaked saddle, and the jacket, and broad-brimmed felt hat of the country, and looked as though the new arrangements quite suited them, the native dandies, on the other hand, were prone to dressing in European fashion, and sitting upon English saddles—in which they looked neither secure nor comfortable. We walked home past the old Bull-ring, now replaced by a new one near the new promenade, and found, to our surprise, that in this quarter of the town many of the streets were under water. We knew that the level of the lake of Tezcuco had been raised by a series of three very wet seasons, but had no idea that things had got so far as this. Of course the ground-floors had to be abandoned, and the people had made a raised pathway of planks along the street, and adopted various contrivances for getting dryshod up to their first floors; and in some places canoes were floating in the street. The city looked like this some two hundred years ago, when Martinez the engineer tried an unfortunate experiment with his draining tunnel at Huehuetoca, and flooded the whole city for five years. It was by the interference, they tell us, of the patroness of the Indians, our Lady of Guadalupe, who was brought from her own temple on purpose, that the city was delivered from the impending destruction. A number of earthquakes took place, which caused the ground to split in large fissures, down which the superfluous water disappeared. For none of her many miracles has the Virgin of Guadalupe got so much credit as for this. To be sure, it is not generally mentioned in orthodox histories of the affair, that she was brought to the capital a year or two before the earthquakes happened.