Visual Education (Jan-Dec 1922)

336 Visual Education An idea of the Aztecs' curious method of city-building is gained from a visit to the "floating islands" of Lake Xochimilco, only a few miles from the capital. From roots, twigs and branches they would weave rafts which they covered with soil brought from the bottom of the lake. Trees were planted along the edges so that their roots might bind the soil and keep it from washing away. At Xochimilco we see these distinctive trees, growing tall and straight like Lombardy poplars, but with evergreen leaves shaped like those of the willow. Originally these manmade islands really floated, so that when the Indian yearned for a change of neighbors or outlook he had merely to tow his island where he listed. After a time, however, the islands became water-logged and sank, and at present are stationary. The streets of Mexico City today are the filled-in canals of that Aztec city of floating gardens which, according to legend, was founded in the marshes of the lake unknown centuries ago. We experience, visually, Mexico's three climates, determined entirely by altitude : the "cold country" on the plateau, the "temperate country" on its slopes, and the "hot ocuntry" below 3000 feet elevation. Some of the capital's sources of food and fuel supplies are pictured : sooty-faced charcoal burners, living in grass huts among the mountains, or trudging to town with their bags and crates of charcoal; Indian farmers plowing with primitive wooden plows on the big haciendas, poling or towing the boats which bring to the city vegetables, fruits and flowers grown in Xochimilco's gardens, or gathering fiom the stalks of the maguey plant the sap which, fermented, yields the national beverage, pulque. We see squaw-like women bargaining away their baskets of produce in Xochimilco's untidy street market, rubbing out the family wash against a flat stone in a convenient but highly insanitary ditch, or cleaning corn for tortillas, the universal Mexican substitute for bread. In the second and third reels points of interest in and about Mexico City are filmed. We visit such places as the famous Zocado, the geographic center of the old Aztec city, the active center of the modern capital, and the very largest plaza in all Mexico ; the National Palace, or government building ; parks, playgrounds, monuments, schools and cathedrals; the unfinished National Theater ; the Castle of Chapultepec, where we make the acquaintance of President Obregon and his two little sons. We watch typical sights like the gay Sunday parade in Chapultepec Park; the peddling of flocks of live turkeys from house to house ; the shuttering of little shops for the afternoon siesta ; the street markets where anything and everything is for sale, from sugar-cane and ice-cream cones to charcoal, pottery, wearing apparel and funeral wreaths ; the flower, fruit and vegetable rafts on La Viga Canal ; the floating kitchens, gardens and dance-floors of Xochimilco, the Venice of Mexico. Reel four pictures something of Mexico's fascinating historical background. We see with amazement the ruins of the sacred city of the Toltecs, that vanished race which lived and wrought here centuries before the Aztecs appeared. H; 1 i £&. i j I M *9f t—jf 1 PR % 88" ■■ \ jHf i unwrap—* : ' 1 !| j\Ln\% ■ ■ "'■ . •' ' ::-.■ 4fWf . ■■'$ S m ^^>. t^ y _'* **• ta^cCfl iMl^^^^— ' ""* ml^^^K^^B flV akPf ™ ■■■-■■ i |. / j Scientists believe that this prehistoric people, before they abandoned the Valley, buried their own city. The Mexican government is now conducting extensive excavations, and constantly new treasures are being unearthed — temples, monuments, friezes, carved inscriptions, and similar antiquities. We. visit the great "Pyramid of the Sun" in its restored form, to find an immense five-layer mound of earth and volcanic rock faced with small stones and cement, resembling a nest of giant boxes. The "Pyramid of the Moon," somewhat smaller, stands near by, not yet "dug out" from its centuries-old covering of earth, vegetation and debris. Shrouded in mystery is the origin of these colossal temples. Four centuries ago, when Cortez invaded Mexico, they were in practically the same ruined state as today, and the natives had only a mass of confused and confusing legends to explain them. Savants consider them the work of a great wandering tribe which entered Mexico from the land of the Nile, predating the Toltecs. Certainly such a film as this will give the newspaper-educated public a brandnew set of impressions of our turbulent neighbor to 'he south, as well as prove a valuable supplement to club and classroom study of the geography and history of this Old World land on a New World continent. Distributed by the Society for Visual Education, Inc. IN THE DAYS OF BUFFALO BILL Does a vision of the America that is to be flash upon the inward eye of President Lincoln as he signs the Union Pacific Act of 1862, authorizing the building of our first transcontinental railroad? IN THE DAYS OF BUFFALO BILL WEAVING numerous threads of fiction into a fabric that is basally historic, Universal's newest chapter-play, IN THE DAYS QF BUFFALO BILL, paints vivid pictures of the colorful years when the first transcontinental railroad was being pushed across the wilderness. The romantic history of this overland route is traced in title and picture : first blazed by the Mormons in 1847, when men called it the Oregon Trail; later serving as the route of the Pony Express ; next adopted as the right-of-way for the pioneering Union Pacific; todaymarking likewise the line of the great Lincoln Highway and the path followed by the first transcontinental airplanes. Only a brief item in the first reel is this recital of the life-story of a road, but it fastens itself like a burr to memory and imagination. The film bristles, of course, with hard riding and fast shooting, lurid adventure and obvious villainy, hairbreadth