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The grandfather of the present king had been the greatest and most powerful of the Tezcucan princes. In his youth he had gone through a series of strange adventures. Tezcuco had been captured, the people subjugated by the Tepanecs, and the king killed when the young prince was but fifteen years old.
Before going away, we held a solemn market of antiquities. We sat cross-legged on the ground, and the Indian women and children brought us many curious articles in clay and obsidian, which we bought and deposited in two great bags of aloe-fibre which our man carried at his saddle-bow. Among the articles we bought were various pipes or whistles of pottery, pitos, as they are called in Spanish, and just as we were mounting our horses to ride off, a lad ran to the top of one of the mounds, and blew on one of these pipes a long dismal note that could be heard a mile off. Our friends had filled our heads so full of robbers and ambushes, that we made sure it was a signal for some one who was waiting for us, and the more so as the boy ran off as soon as he had blown his blast; and when we looked round for the people whose antiquities we had been buying, they had all disappeared. But nothing came of it, and we got safely back to Tezcuco. As usual, we spent a capital evening, and separated late. The owner of the glass-works, who had been spending the evening with us, had an adventure on his road home. He was peaceably riding along, when two men rushed out from behind the corner of the street, and shouted "alto ahí!" (halte-l
Xochimulco is the pond, or open space in the marsh, that extends from the Chalco to near Mexicalzingo. Tezcuco is the lowest water in the valley, being 6-1/2 feet below the Grand Plaza of the city. It receives the surplus of the waters that have not already been evaporated in the other ponds.
At last we reached the crest of the mountain from which we looked down upon the valley of Mexico, a huge basin encircled by mountains; and there at our feet lay the capital, with its two hundred thousand souls, its picturesque buildings, and the lakes of Chalco and Tezcuco, while to one side the huge snow-capped volcanoes, the Iztaccihuatl and the Popocatepetl, like two gigantic sentries, seemed to watch over the sacredness of this classical spot of Mexican history.
From this point Cortéz and his party, without their women or treasures, trudged along to the foot of the hills to Tepeac, or Guadalupe, and thence around the foot of Tezcuco to the plains of Otumba.
In the south-western border of Lake Tezcuco, one morning in 1300, a wandering tribe of Aztecs saw an eagle perched, with outspread wings, upon a cactus, and holding a serpent in its talons. At a word from their priests, they took possession of the marsh and there stayed their migration and founded the city; such is the tradition.
Two days after arriving at the capital, Roger asked Malinche if she could obtain permission from the general for him to cross the lake to Tezcuco, in order that he might pay his friends there a visit. Presently she returned, saying that the general himself would speak to him.
The introduction of human sacrifices was a comparatively recent innovation in Tezcuco, and although the Aztecs had, lately, almost forced their own hideous rites upon their neighbors, there were many who were still, at heart, opposed to them. He turned the subject by saying: "There will be much for you to tell me, when we have leisure. At present the banquet waits."
'Let us play and see, said Montezuma, and they went down to the place that is called tlachco, where the games are set. Here they began the match with dice and at first all went well for Montezuma, so that he called aloud that already he was lord of Tezcuco. 'May it be so! answered the aged Neza, and from that moment the chance changed.
"I heard it yesterday afternoon, Cacama; and crossed at nightfall to Tezcuco, with the news." "You saw my wife?" Cacama asked eagerly. "How is she? How does she bear the blow?" "She was lost in grief when I first arrived there, but the necessity for action aroused her. She and Amenche agreed that they would not await the coming of the usurper today.
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