It comes from _alamo_, which means a poplar.

Imagine a long wide level road, a mile or so long, generally so chosen as to have a fine view, with footpaths on each side, lines of poplar trees, a fountain at each end and a statue in the middle, and this description will stand pretty nearly for almost every promenade of the kind I have seen in Spain or Spanish America.
[Illustration: WATER-CARRIER AND A MEXICAN WOMAN, AT THE FOUNTAIN.] Tacubaya is a pleasant place on the ride of the first hills that begin to rise towards the mountain-wall of the valley.

Here rich Mexicans have country-houses in large gardens, which are interesting from the immense variety of plants which grow there, though badly kept up, and systematically stripped by the gardeners of the fruit as it gets ripe--for their own benefit, of course.

From Tacubaya we go to Chapultepec (Grasshopper Mountain), which is a volcanic hill of porphyry rising from the plain.

On the top is the palace on which the viceroy Galvez expended great sums of money some seventy years ago, making it into a building which would serve either as a palace or as a fortress in cases of emergency.