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Show TRADITION OF MEXICAN FLAG. The flag of Mexico Is the mate of the Italian tri color, though the green of Italy is paler than that of Mexico. The three colors are green, white and red. On the white in the Mexican flag is the seal of Mexico. It shows an eagle on a bush or branch of nopal a common cactus holding a serpent ser-pent in his beak. The interpretation, says the Christian Science Monitor, ia sometimes given that this is the serpent ser-pent 01 despotism, but the legend of the seal goes further back than the despotism of the Spaniards. The story is that during the time of the Aztecs the people were looking for a place to found their city. They came to the holders of Lake Texcoco, and there they haPed. They saw before (hen: an immense goblen eale some say a small eagle on a enctus with a serpent in its talons and its v,ings spread to the rising sun. Forthwith Forth-with they laid there the foundation of the great city, Tenochititlan, which is the City of ' Mexico today. The date set for this of course conjee tuial, la about 1325 At first built with reeds and rushe3 en piles in the edge of the lake, the rude Indian huts were in time re-plaee, re-plaee, by s hug - olty of stone, massive mas-sive and with something of the engineering engi-neering and artistic skill which the ancient monuments of E?J'pt display- Mexico City today stands In the midst jiPBS of streets that run outside the walls gMg along the very causeways where the rafPKft streets entered Tenochtltlan of old. nraSj The Aztec temple was a pyramid 100 ipS feet high, with 111 steps from the ground to a broad esplanade on which jSrV 30 horsemen could ride in tournev. V1$:J? From the top of this temple Cortez 1 looked down on the beautiful land H jifas; which he was to dominate A cause- way led from Lake Chalco to Lake iBV-'- Texcoco, and over thls the Spaniards !,-$4' came The old city was intersected with canals, like Venice, and these f ' ' canals have todav become streets of Fmt' the City of Mexico. f' The empire of the Montezumas Is supposed to have been founded about 1460, and the earliest records of the Indian race in Mexico point to the Ifc'"-' kingdom of the Toltecs. in 618. Mexi- CO ' ity was for 200 years after tha fu'"t! Spanish conquest, in 1519, the metrop- oils of European civilization in the V ' new world, and by the end of tho LT1" eighteenth century there were 125. noo f'' people there, including Spaniards and ffT.J i-mixed i-mixed descendants of the Indians and Spaniards The population of Mexico fct City, in 1900, was 344,721. " " J 00 F |