e, finally,
in A. D. 1325, halted on the southwestern shores of the great lake.
According to tradition, a heavenly vision thus announced the site of
their future capital:

They beheld perched on the stem of a prickly-pear, which shot out
from the crevice of a rock washed by the waves, a royal eagle of
extraordinary size and beauty, with a serpent in its talons, and
its broad wings opened to the rising sun. They hailed the
auspicious omen, announced by an oracle as indicating the sight of
their future city, and laid its foundations by sinking piles into
the shallows; for the low marshes were half buried under water....
The place was called Tenochtitlan (i. e. "the cactus on a rock") in
token of its miraculous origin. [Such were the humble beginnings of
the Venice of the Western World.][9]

[Footnote 9: Prescott, i, I, pp. 8, 9.]

To this day the arms of the Mexican republic show the device of the
eagle and the cactus--to commemorate the legend of the foundation of the
capital--afterward called Mexico from the name of their war-god. Fiercer
and more warlike than their brethren of Tezcuco, the men of the latter
town were glad of their assistance, when invaded and defeated by a
hostile tribe. Thus Mexico and Tezcuco became close allies, and by the
time of Montezuma I, in the middle of the fifteenth century, their
sovereignty had extended beyond their native plateau to the coast
country along the Gulf of Mexico. The capital rapidly increased in
population, the original houses being replaced by substantial stone
buildings. There are documents showing that Tenochtitlan was of much
larger dimensions than the modern capital of Mexico, on the same site.
Just before the arrival of the Spaniards, at the beginning of the
sixteenth century, the kingdom extended from the gulf across to the
Pacific; and southward under the ruthless Ahuitzotl over the whole of
Guatemala and Nicaragua.

The Aztecs resembled the ancient Peruvians in very few respects, one
being the use of knots on strings of different colors to record events
and numbers. Compare our account of "the quipu" in Chapter X. The Aztecs
seem to have replaced that rude method of making memoranda during the
seventh century by picture-writing. Before the Spanish invasion,
thousands of native clerks or chroniclers were employed in painting on
vegetable paper and canvas. Examples of such manuscripts may still be
seen in all the g