"The Indians gathered much of this and kept it in Heaps, and made thereof Cakes like unto Brick-bats, and they did eat this with as good a Stomach as we eat Cheese; yea, and they hold Opinion that this Scum, or Fatness, of the Water is the Cause that such great number of Fowl cometh to the Lake, which in the winter Season is infinite."
Custom has not changed in two hundred and fifty years. They sell these "cakes like unto brick-bats" in the markets of Mexico to-day, and the Indians eat the stuff with good relish. It bears some resemblance to fine fish-roe; and after all, prejudice again being removed, and one being hungry, it is not bad eating. The Indians gather these insects by myriads and pound them into paste, which is afterwards wrapped in corn-husks, and forms an article of food second only to the one just mentioned. The laying capacity of the insect, which is about the size of an ordinary fly, is something marvellous, surpassing the abilities of the choicest fowls that ever were reared.
A DEAD FLY.
"You may judge how abundant these insects are," said Frank, "when I tell you they settle down so thickly on the water that we thought they were shoals, or mud-banks! Fortunately for us, they didn't sting, nor did they even settle on the boat."
In one of his letters to the King describing the country he had conquered Cortez gave a minute account of the lakes in the neighborhood of Tenochtitlan, and naturally mentioned the fact that they had no outlet. He solved the mystery of the disappearance of the waters by gravely declaring that there was a large hole in the bottom of Lake Tezcoco by which the lake was drained. A century later an engineer was sent from Spain to find the hole in the bottom of the lake. He made many surveys, but was unable to discover it, and finally concluded that the surplus water was carried off by evaporation.
