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The portraits of the vice-kings, from Cortéz down to the last of his successors, stretch entirely across one side of the hall, and about the same number of Indian caçiques are daubed upon a piece of papyrus that is fastened upon the opposite wall.
In this very city where Cortéz tortured Guatemozin was a son of Cortéz, who inherited the spoils of his father's atrocities, put to the torture by one of the Vice-kings, while the children's children of the Conquistadors paid for the wealth they inherited in the terrible penalties inflicted upon them by the buccaneers, that ravaged their coasts for two hundred years.
Such is not the habit of governors in India or vice-kings elsewhere. I saw the satrap of Teheran once, and he wore a turban of silk and a cloak of cloth of gold, and the hilt and scabbard of his sword made me dizzy with their splendor of precious stones. I thought Osiris had lent him a glory from the sun. I fear you have not entered upon your kingdom the kingdom I was to share with you."
These trees had added many rings to their already enlarged circumference before the vice-kings disappeared, and an emperor sat in the shade which had been their favorite retreat; and the Aztec eagle floated again upon the standard that waved over Chapultepec; but it was only the galvanized corpse of that brave bird, and the emperor was only a victim prepared for the sacrifice.
From many, I select one illustration of the state of society in the times of the vice-kings. There once was, the tradition runs in this village, an old hidalgo who possessed a plantation in the immediate neighborhood of the town. His family consisted of himself and two daughters; and he was rich.
The mine of El Carmen, in the times of the vice-kings, produced so immensely that its proprietor was ennobled, with the title of Marquis of Bustamente. This was the beginning of the family of Bustamente. A piece of pure silver was found here weighing four hundred and twenty-five pounds. On arriving at the other side, he found the crest of an immense lode laid bare by the force of the water.
I received another visit from the Royal Family, accompanied this time by many of the Vice-Kings then in Tahaiti, with their consorts. Among them was the grandfather of the little monarch Pomareh the Second. After some preliminaries, my illustrious guests unanimously preferred a request in the most modest, yet pressing manner. They wished me to get a pair of boots made for the little King.
It is totally inadequate to feed the population of Mexico under the vice-kings, 400,000, or its present population of say 300,000; nor could the valley itself be made to sustain one third of this.
Then the pale-faces came, and peopled the valley with a race of mixed blood, and vice-kings occupied the place that had been the sacred retreat of the Aztec chiefs.
On great holidays, in the times of the vice-kings, the scene was changed. The grandest of all the bull-fights of Mexico was nothing in comparison with this vice-regal exhibition. As among the Aztecs and the pagan Romans, the sacrificial victims were kept in reserve for important occasions, and for occasions when a bull-fight would have been a most inadequate exhibition.
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