quite fertile, and a little way from the village are several
water-mills, where the grain raised in this part of the valley is
ground into flour.

THE VIRGIN OF REMEDIES.

A little way beyond Tacuba is the hill and temple of the Virgin of
Remedies. It was upon this hill, within the inclosure of an Indian
mound, that the retreating party of Cortez made their first bivouac,
and built fires and dressed their wounds. Hence they gave to the hill
the name of _Remedios_, and the church afterward erected was dedicated
to our Lady of Remedies. Diaz tells us that it became very celebrated
in his time. The story about Cortez finding a broken-nosed image in the
knapsack of one of his soldiers is not mentioned either by himself or
Bernal Diaz, and must therefore be an afterthought, to give
plausibility to a subsequent imposition. From this point Cortez and his
party, without their women or treasures, trudged along to the foot of
the hills to Tepeac, or Guadalupe, and thence around the foot of
Tezcuco to the plains of Otumba.

The story is, that while Cortez and his men were resting here, a
soldier took from his knapsack an image, with nose broken and an eye
wanting, which Cortez made the patron saint of the expedition, and held
it up to their adoration, and that this little incident so encouraged
the men that they started off with renewed vigor. The whole of this
story is probably a very silly modern invention. The bulk of the forces
of Cortez was most probably composed of that class of reprobates that
to this day can be found about almost any of the West India sea-ports,
ready for any enterprise, however hazardous. They have no religion;
they are not even superstitious, but yield a nominal acquiescence to
the forms of the Catholic religion. Cortez speaks often of his efforts
to effect the conversion of the Indians, but it is in such a business
sort of way as to lead to the impression, that it was all done to make
an impression at home, but was really a matter that he did not care
much about. The famous image, according to the current story,
disappeared soon after the Conquest, but was found about 150 years
afterward in a maguey plant, and was as much dilapidated as if it had
been exposed to the weather for the whole of that century and a half.

Such, in substance, is the tradition of the Virgin of Remedies, who for
a century divided with the Virgin of Guadalupe the adoration of the
people in the most amicable manner. But when