a cross for their adoration, which indeed they
did in most of the places where they halted. The troops now entered upon
a rugged, narrow valley, called 'the Bishop's Pass,' and now it began to
be terribly cold, the snow and hail beat upon them, and the freezing
wind seemed to penetrate to their very bones. The Spaniards were partly
protected by their armour, and their thick coats of quilted cotton, but
the poor Indians, natives of the hot region and with very little
clothing, suffered greatly, and indeed several of them died by the way.
The path lay round a bare and dreadful-looking volcanic mountain, and
often upon the edge of precipices three thousand feet in depth. After
three days of this dreary travelling the army emerged into a more genial
climate; they had reached the great tableland which spreads out for
hundreds of miles along the crests of the Cordilleras, more than seven
thousand feet above the sea-level. The vegetation of the torrid and
temperate regions had of course disappeared, but the fields were
carefully cultivated. Many of the crops were unknown to the Spaniards,
but they recognised maize and aloes, and various kinds of cactus.
Suddenly the troops came upon what seemed to be a populous city, even
larger than Cempoalla, and with loftier and more substantial buildings,
of stone and lime. There were thirteen teocallis in the town, and in one
place in the suburbs one of the Spaniards counted the stored-up skulls
of a hundred thousand sacrificed victims. The lord of the town ruled
over twenty thousand vassals; he was a tributary to Montezuma, and there
was a strong Mexican garrison in the place. This was probably the reason
of his receiving Cortes and his army very coldly, and vaunting the
grandeur of the Mexican emperor, who could, he declared, muster thirty
great vassals, each of whom commanded a hundred thousand men. In answer
to the inquiries of Cortes, he told him about Montezuma and his capital.
How more than twenty thousand prisoners of war were sacrificed every
year upon the altars of his gods, and how the city stood in the midst of
a great lake, and was approached by long causeways connected in places
by wooden bridges, which when raised cut off all communication with the
country--and many other strange things which were not of a kind to
reassure the minds of the Spaniards. They hardly knew whether to believe
the old cacique or not, but at any rate the wonders they heard made
them, as one of their c