I never saw water-snakes in numbers to compare with those in the canal, and by the side of it.

They were swimming in the water, wriggling in and out; and on the banks they were writhing in heaps, like our passengers forward.

Two of our crew tow us along, and we are soon clear of the canal, and of the salt-swamp that extends on both sides of it, where the bottom of the lake was in old times.

Once fairly out, we look round us.

We see Mexico from a new point of view, and begin to understand why the Spaniards called it the Venice of the New World.