The elevation of the Castiles, according to the authority repeatedly cited, is about 350 toises, or 2100 feet above the ocean. (Humboldt’s Dissertation, apud Laborde, Itinéraire descriptif de l’Espagne (Paris, 1827), tom. i. p. 5.) It is rare to find plains in Europe of so great a height.

Archbishop Lorenzana estimates the circuit of the Valley at ninety leagues, correcting at the same time the statement of Cortés, which puts it at seventy, very near the truth, as appears from the result of M. de Humboldt’s measurement, cited in the text. Its length is about eighteen leagues, by twelve and a half in breadth. (Humboldt, Essai politique, tom. ii. p. 29.—Lorenzana, Hist. de Nueva-España, p. 101.) Humboldt’s map of the Valley of Mexico forms the third in his “Atlas géographique et physique,” and, like all the others in the collection, will be found of inestimable value to the traveller, the geologist, and the historian.

Humboldt, Essai politique, tom. ii. pp. 29, 44-49.—Malte-Brun, book 85. This latter geographer assigns only 6700 feet for the level of the Valley, contradicting himself (comp. book 83), or rather Humboldt, to whose pages he helps himself plenis manibus, somewhat too liberally, indeed, for the scanty references at the bottom of his page.

Torquemada accounts in part for this diminution by supposing that, as God permitted the waters, which once covered the whole earth, to subside after mankind had been nearly exterminated for their iniquities, so he allowed the waters of the Mexican lake to subside, in token of good will and reconciliation, after the idolatrous races of the land had been destroyed by the Spaniards! (Monarchía Indiana (Madrid, 1723), tom. i. p. 309.) Quite as probable, if not as orthodox, an explanation, may be found in the active evaporation of these upper regions, and in the fact of