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Grass grew here also, and he rested a while, wrapped in his serape against the coldness of the night. He saw behind and now below him the city, the towers of the churches outlined against the sky. It was from some such place as this that Cortez and his men, embarked upon the world's most marvelous adventure, had looked down for the first time upon the ancient city of Tenochtitlan.
In a few moments he heard her light footfall, and, facing about, confronted her. She continued to advance until she was within arm's reach of him: then she paused, and gazed steadfastly in his face. He was the first human being, save Kamaiakan, that she had seen since her eyes closed upon the world of Tenochtitlan, three hundred years before. The young man looked upon her with manifest surprise.
For the present we may conclude in the spirit of one of the noble Spanish historians, Pedro de Cieza de Leon, and praise God, that the idols are cast down." Cortes applies this name to the province in which the city, called by him Temixtitan, more properly Tenochtitlan, but now Mexico, was situated. Throughout this article the curious spelling of the great conqueror is retained as he wrote.
"But what I'd like to have are some books that tell about old Mexico and about the city of Tenochtitlan, that stood here before the Spaniards came. I've been all around everywhere. I've seen the swamps and the lakes and the walls and forts and everything. The great cathedral " "That," interposed Señora Tassara, "stands on the very spot where an old temple of the Aztec war-god stood.
Here as in the great valley of Tenochtitlan it seemed ancient, old, old beyond all computation. Here and there, were ruins of which the Mexican peons knew nothing. Sometimes these ruins stood out on a bare slope, and again they were almost hidden by vegetation.
The two exceptions are the Aztec and the Chinese; regarding the first of these, the Spanish conquistadores destroyed such civilisation as existed in Tenochtitlan so thoroughly that, if legend of flight was among the Aztec records, it went with the rest; as to the Chinese, it is more than passing strange that they, who claim to have known and done everything while the first of history was shaping, even to antedating the discovery of gunpowder that was not made by Roger Bacon, have not yet set up a claim to successful handling of a monoplane some four thousand years ago, or at least to the patrol of the Gulf of Korea and the Mongolian frontier by a forerunner of the 'blimp.
The year may have been chosen in commemoration of the foundation of Mexico or Tenochtitlán, which historians give as somewhere about 1324 or 1325. The sign 13 acatl would stand for 1323. It is more likely that the date merely refers to the year in which the calendar was put up.
Which captive, as I found, was of the nation that dwelt in Tenochtitlan before our great captain, Don Fernando Cortés, reduced that city to submission.
With less minuteness, Father Duran gives almost the same information. He himself had often heard the songs which Montezuma of Tenochtitlan, and Nezahualpizintli of Tezcuco, had ordered to be composed in their own honor, describing their noble lineage, their riches, their grandeur and their victories.
Cortès continued on a westerly course, seeking a suitable place for landing, but he could find none until he reached St. John d'Ulloa. Their monarch, named Moctheuzoma, better known under the name of Montezuma, lived in Tenochtitlan, or Mexico, nearly 210 miles away in the interior.
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