Several species of very small fish inhabit lakes Chalco and Xochimilco; indeed, the fish marker of the Mexican capital is chiefly supplied from them. But I have never heard of the axolotl being taken, or observed in either; and you surprise me by saying it has spawned in fresh water in the Brighton Aquarium. Tezcoco, from which I presume your Protean must have come, is altogether of a different character, being salt as brine itself—so much that a man bathing in it comes out with a scaly crust over his skin, while waterfowl are often caught upon it, unable to fly through their wings getting thus encrusted! No fish can live in it, for the few minnow-like species there observed are found only by the estuaries of influent fresh-water streams. Even vegetation struggles in vain against the blighting influence of its atmosphere, and around its shores are seen but the forms of plants belonging to species that grow in salitrose soil; these so stunted and sparse as rather to heighten the impression of sterility. Tezcoco is, in truth, a Dead Sea of the Western world. Not so small, neither, since its area may be estimated at a hundred square miles, more or less. Once it was much larger—at the time of the Conquest—this being the lake whose waters washed the walls of the ancient Tenochtitlan. At the present time its edge is, at least, a league from the suburbs of the modern city standing on the same site. At certain seasons, however, after a long spell of rain, but more from the effects of a strong east wind, the lake is brought nearer, by overflow of the adjacent plain, a phenomenon leading to the popular but erroneous idea that Tezcoco, like the ocean, has a tide. Once, too, if we are to credit Humboldt, this lake was much deeper than it is now. Writing of it in 1803, he states its depth then to have been from three to five French mètres. I think the great German traveller must have been misinformed, as there has been no silting up to account for its present shallowness. There is not a spot in Lake Tezcoco where a man, standing upright, would have his head under water. It is traversed by market boats of the bread-basket pattern, flat bottomed, and impelled by poling—just the same sort as Cortez found navigating it when he launched his brigantine on its eastern edge, which vessel was doubtless nothing more than a rude raft. The periaguas, and other craft which now ply upon it, bringing produce from Tezcoco, and other lake shore towns to the capital city, are all of the punt species, none of them drawing over eighteen inches of water. Notwithstanding, they have to keep to well-known ways, where the lake is deepest, guiding their course by certain landmarks on the shore, passing a wooden cross, “La Cruz,” planted near the centre, coming in sight of which the devout—or rather, I should say, superstitious—boatmen uncover, and offer up a prayer to “Al Virgen.”
This grand shallow sheet, then, so saline that fish cannot live in it, and vegetation withers under its blighting breath, is the congenial dwelling-place of the axolotl, and, if I mistake not, its only one in the Valley of Mexico; at least I am not aware of its existence in the other three lakes lying northward, their waters salt, too, but at times so low as to be almost dried up, or showing only a residuum of mud, its surface an efflorescence, akin to soda, and resembling hoar frost, called “tequiqzuite.”
Though in a sense the sole inhabitant of Tezcoco, the axolotl is not left to peaceful or undisputed possession of the lake. It has its enemies in the predatory aquatic birds—herons, cranes, and cormorants—while man is also among them. To the “Lake Indian” its capture is a matter of economic industry, its flesh being a saleable commodity in the market. It is not absolutely relished as an article of food, except by the Indians themselves; who, as is well known, will eat anything and everything that lives, moves, and has being, be it fish, fowl, reptile, or insect. This, from ancient usage, originally a thing of necessity, not choice, when the Aztec, surrounded by Tlascallan, with other warlike enemies, was confined to the islands of this inland sea, and from it compelled to draw part of his sustenance—to eat indifferently frogs, tadpoles, newts, and such repulsive reptiles; as also the eggs of a curious water-fly—the axavacatl (Ahuatlea Mexicana)—a sort of “caviar,” still obtainable in the markets of the Mexican capital. I have seen the axolotl of respectable dimensions—at least a foot in length, while specimens of fifteen and sixteen inches are occasionally exhibited. Fish or flesh, relished or not, it is often eaten by invalids, the Mexican medicos pronouncing it a specific for liver inflammation and pulmonary complaints, as we do cod-liver oil; while it is also supposed to be serviceable in cases of hectic fever, and as a food for children. A mucilaginous syrup, compounded of its gelatinous portions and certain medicinal herbs, is sold in the boticas of the apothecaries as a balsam for colds, coughs, and other bronchial maladies.
I refrain from touching on the zoological character of this creature, so strangely abnormal, as I could add nothing to what is already known to you. Besides, that is a question for the scientific naturalist, to whom I leave it. But it may not be generally known that, in addition to your Brighton Aquarium species—which is, I suppose, the Siredon Humboldtii, or Siredon Harlanii, of Laguna de Tezcoco—there is a new and quite distinct one recently discovered, inhabiting Lake Patzcuaro. This large sheet of water, lying centrally in the State of Michoacan—more than a hundred miles from the Mexican valley, in a direction nearly due west—has also its axolotl. Its discoverer has named it Siredon Dumerilii, after the accomplished French herpetologist; while its local vulgar name on the shores of Patzcuaro is “achoque de agua,” or “water achoque,” to distinguish it from a sort of land lizard called “achoque de tierra”—the Bolitoglossa Mexicana of Dumeril and Bibron, also common around the edges of the Michoacan Lake. The Patzcuaro species differs from yours of the Brighton Aquarium in several respects. In size it is somewhat the same; but its colour, instead of being blackish, or white, as in the Albino varieties of Humboldt’s Siredon, is of a violet-red, slightly blemished with grey, the gills only being black, while the neck, throat, and breast are of a pale, whitish hue.
Without dwelling longer on this subject, I will venture to say that when all of the great Mexican saline lakes—such as Chapa’a and Cuitzoc—are searched, there will be found other species of axolotl, distinct from any of those yet known to science. Mexico is a fine field for the scientific explorer; its paths hitherto but little trodden by the naturalist, because unsafe from being so much frequented by the “Knights of the Road,” ycleped salteadores.
Mayne Reid.