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Cortez in 1520 and Scott in 1847 led their conquering hosts over the elevated pass which nature had formed between these mountains. The two summits are connected by a well-wooded ridge, itself some three thousand feet in height, looking from a distance like a deep valley between the grand mountains.
Yet there it is so. The civilisation that Cortez overthrew was more suitable for the Indians than that which has supplanted it.
Not since he was eleven years old. He has been on that cold dreadful island in the North all this time. I wonder has he changed!" "Why should he change?" asked Doña Jacoba. "Is he not a Cortez and a Duncan? Is he not a Californian and a Catholic? Can a few years in an English school make him of another race? He is seven years older, that is all."
Upon their route through the plains the peasantry held aloof, and the greater portion of the population of Tezcuco withdrew before their arrival; and even its new lord, although appointed at the instigation of Cortez, was absent from the city. Dispatches arrived from Alvarado saying that the Mexicans had, for the last fortnight, ceased their attacks; but were blockading him in the palace.
The act was one of almost unparalleled boldness; but as performed upon a monarch who was the host of his assailants, and with whom they were previously on the most friendly relations, it was an act of treachery, and reflects dishonor upon the fame of Cortez.
When Cortez made his advent here he found Cholula to be the sacred city of the Aztecs, where their main body of high priests and their most venerated temples were located. Is it possible that these mud-built cabins represent a city once so grand and so populous?
This is the case not only as relating to Mexico, but the past story of Spain both at home and abroad. "What is history," says the first Napoleon, "but a fable agreed upon?" The horrid pictures of human sacrifice as represented by the Spanish chroniclers, also by the letters and despatches of Cortez, we do not credit, though undoubtedly they had some foundation in truth.
There are many personal relics of Cortez shown to the visitors at the municipal palace; but the intelligent observer, aided by the light of history, finds it difficult to accord much admiration to this man.
In the midst of the long story of the misdealings of the white men with the red, which begins with Cortez and Pizarro, and is still continued in the daily newspapers, this justice and honesty of William Penn is a point of light.
All the time they ascended, and Ned saw far below him valley after valley, much the same, at the distance, as they were when Cortez and his men first gazed upon them more than three hundred years before. Yet the look of the land was always different from that to which he was used north of the Rio Grande.
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