These are square pillars twenty or thirty feet high, with a cistern at the top of each, into which the water from the higher level flowed, and from which other pipes carried it on; the sole object of the whole apparatus being to break the column of water, and reduce the pressure to the thirty or forty feet which the pipes of earthenware would bear.
This subject of irrigation is very interesting with reference to the future of Mexico.

We visited two or three country-houses in the plateaux, where the gardens are regularly watered by artificial channels, and the result is a vegetation of wonderful exuberance and beauty, converting these spots into oases in the desert.

On the lower levels of the tierra templada where the sugar-cane is cultivated, a costly system of water-supply has been established in the haciendas with the best results.

Even in the plains of Mexico and Puebla, the grain-fields are irrigated to some small degree.

But notwithstanding this progress in the right direction, the face of the country shows the most miserable waste of one of the chief elements of the wealth and prosperity of the country, the water.
In this respect, Spain and the high lands of Mexico may be compared together.