ther populous
places situated on the terra firma, and that causeway, straight as a
level, which went into Mexico, we remained astonished, and said to one
another that it appeared like the enchanted castles which they tell of
in the book of Amadis, by reason of the great towers, temples, and
edifices which there were in the water, all of them work of masonry.
Some of our soldiers asked if this that they saw was not a thing in a
dream."

{168}

Fiske thus felicitously alludes to it: "It may be well called the most
romantic moment in all history, this moment when European eyes first
rested upon that city of wonders, the chief ornament of a stage of
social evolution two full ethnical periods behind their own. To say
that it was like stepping back across the centuries to visit the
Nineveh of Sennacherib or hundred-gated Thebes, is but inadequately to
depict the situation, for it was a longer step than that. Such chances
do not come twice to mankind, for when two grades of culture so widely
severed are brought into contact, the stronger is apt to blight and
crush the weaker where it does not amend and transform it. In spite of
its foul abominations, one sometimes feels that one would like to
recall the extinct state of society in order to study it. The devoted
lover of history, who ransacks all sciences for aid toward
understanding the course of human events, who knows in what unexpected
ways one progress often illustrates other stages, will sometimes wish
it were possible to resuscitate, even for one brief year, the vanished
City of the Cactus Rock. Could such a work of enchantment be
performed, however, our first feeling would doubtless be one of
ineffable horror and disgust, like that of the knight in the old
English ballad, who, folding in his arms a damsel of radiant beauty,
finds himself in the embrace of a loathsome fiend."

What the emotions of the Mexicans were we have no account, but it is
not difficult to imagine them. Amazement as at the visitation of a
god, fear begot of this gross superstition, apprehension of what might
be the result of the coming of these strange monsters, curiosity
mingled with admiration; and as they looked at the long lines of
fierce, dauntless, implacable {169} Tlascalans who accompanied the
Spaniards, their hereditary enemies, there must have swelled in their
savage breasts feelings of deep and bitter hatred.

Outwardly, however, all was calm. The Spaniards marched through the