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The Dreaded and also Welcome Norther. San Juan d'Ulloa. Landing of Cortez. His Expedition Piratical. View of the City from the Sea. Cortez's Destruction of his Ships. Anecdote of Charles V. A Sickly Capital. Street Scenes. Trade. The Mantilla. Plaza de la Constitucion. Typical Characters. Brilliant Fireflies. Well-To-Do Beggars. Principal Edifices. The Campo Santo. City Dwelling-Houses.

Beneath the plain which immediately surrounds the city is a dry marsh which was a broad lake in Cortez's day, indeed, it is a lake still, four or five feet below the surface of the ground, containing the accumulated drainage of centuries.

Those on the flanks were often forced, by the pressure, down the slippery sides; and were instantly captured and carried off by the canoes of the enemy. Cortez's standard bearer was among those who fell in the canal, but he succeeded in recovering his footing, and saved the standard. At last the fugitives reached the spot where the cannon and cavalry had been placed in reserve.

Cortez's expedition, which landed at Vera Cruz, April 21, 1519, was not the first to discover the continent in this neighborhood; he had been preceded nearly two years by a rich merchant of Cuba, who fitted out a couple of small vessels on his own account, mainly for the purpose of trading, and being also in search of that great lure, gold, which it was supposed existed in large quantities among the native tribes of the mainland.

Besides which, he contradicts both himself and Cortez's account in many important particulars. We believe, with Wilson, that this name of Bernal Diaz is a pure fabrication, gotten up as a priestly scheme to further their own purposes, and cover up the insufferable wickedness of the Roman Church in Mexico, as well as to screen the bloodthirsty career of its agent Cortez.

Cortéz's account of deep waters has often been made plausible by adding the hypothesis that the accumulating mud of centuries has filled up the lakes, so that they now are only shallow ponds.

When we compare circumstances together, we shall be led, with Hakluyt, to conclude that Madog landed on some part of New England, Virginia, &c. and that in process of time the Colony extended itself Southward to Mexico, and other places; and that those Foreign Ancestors of the Mexican Chiefs, of whom the Spanish Writers often speak in their accounts of Cortez's Adventures, were Ancient Britons.

Cholula of To-Day. Comprehensive View. A Modern Tower of Babel. Multiplicity of Ruins. Cortez's Exaggerations. Sacrifices of Human Beings. The Hateful Inquisition. A Wholesale Murderous Scheme. Unreliable Historians. Spanish Falsification. Interesting Churches. Off the Track. Personal Relics of Cortez. Torturing a Victim. Aztec Antiquities. Tlaxcala. Church of San Francisco. Peon Dwellings.

"Besides, the Spanish were fabulous liars. In Cortez's attempt to impress Spain's king, he built himself up far beyond reality. To read his reports you'd think the pueblo of Mexico had a population pushing a million. Actually, if it had thirty thousand it was doing well. Without a field agriculture and with their primitive transport, they must have been hard put to feed even that large a town."

Silver Mines. Sugar Lands. Manufactories. Cortez's Presents to Charles V. Water Power. Coal Measures. Railroads. Historic Locality. Social Characteristics. People divided into Castes. Peonage. Radical Progress. Education and the Priesthood. A Threshing Machine. Social Etiquette. Political Organization of the Government. Mexico the Synonym of Barbarism.