[39] This is the prince who was taken by Cortés on his Honduras expedition with the kings of Texcoco and Tacuba. As punishment for plotting to escape they were hanged head downward from a tree in the wilderness. Humboldt saw this represented in a hieroglyphic painting in the convent of San Felipe Neri, and even Bernal Diaz relates that the companions in arms of Cortés were "much shocked" at the occurrence.
Now Cuauhtemoc stands in gold and bronze in one of the glorietas of the beautiful Paseo, high on a marble column, with Aztec devices on base and plinth, where he can keep watch on his hills and volcanoes and lakes. He sustained the siege of Mexico for seventy-nine days, and the inscription says, "to the memory of Cuauhtemoc and those warriors who fought heroically in defense of their country MDXXI." Diaz and his then Minister of Public Works, Riva Palacio, MDCCCLXXVII, ordered it to be erected, and later it was finished under Manuel Gonzalez and his Minister of Public Works, MDCCCLXXXII.
[40] The body of Maximilian lies with his kin in the imperial vault of the Capuchin church in Vienna.
[41] Without civil rights.
[42] Accursed one.
[43] This ship has played a rôle in the destinies of two of Mexico's rulers, for it not only bore Diaz into exile, but it was the ship containing the ammunition for Huerta, to prevent the delivery of which we thought we were obliged to seize Vera Cruz, April 21, 1914.
[44] Died in New York, August 23, 1916, of a maladie de langueur. How could she resist a winter exiled in Harlem, after the flight from Mexico in 1915—the world, her world, in ruins? As well put an orchid in a cellar in the autumn and expect to find it blooming in the spring.
[45] This house was burned and sacked during the Decena Trágica, February, 1913, by what the newspapers called la furia popular, and remains to this day a mass of crumbling and charred walls, roofless and windowless, sic transit.
[46] The American interests are chiefly situated in the district of El Ebano, on the frontier of the states of Vera Cruz and San Luis Potosí. The English are in the district of Tuxpam in the state of Vera Cruz, and the total of the interests represented is about a hundred million dollars for the American, seventy-five millions for the English, and between two and three millions for the Mexican. The figures do rather sustain the adage that "Mexico is the mother of foreigners, but the stepmother of Mexicans."
[47] In the palace in the Salón Rojo is a large picture of the battle of Puebla, with Diaz prominently figured. The picturesque dress of the Puebla mountain Indians gives it a familiar note. There is nothing wanting to show the prowess of Mexicans, and it portrays the French retreating down-hill in terrible disorder—chasseurs d'Afrique and chasseurs de Vincennes giving it a European touch not in keeping with the bits of maguey in the landscape.