ββ¦ we went to the orchard and garden, which was such a wonderful thing to see and to pass through that I never grew tired of experiencing the variety of trees and the scent each one had, the terraces full of roses and flowers, the many fruit trees and native rose gardens, a pond of fresh water, and something else worth seeing: that, through an opening they had made, large canoes could enter the garden from the lake without landing, everything very whitened and bright with all kinds of stone and pictures on it that gave much to ponder, and birds of many kinds and species that came into the pond. I say again that I was there looking at it, and I believed that never in the world had lands like these been discovered, because at that time there was no Peru, nor any idea of it. Now all this is fallen down, ruined; there is nothing.β
-Bernal Diaz del Castilo, the True History of New Spain
This is Bernal Diaz writing about an orchard in Itzpalapa, which he saw on his journey with Cortez into Mexico. Itβs all gone and itβs never coming back
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