"It is the promised land!" and were amazed at the splendor of the city, as well as the surrounding country, where there were fields of maize, vanilla, indigo, sugar cane, flowering cacao groves, and banana trees in profusion. The streets of Cholula were filled with a concourse of priests whom Cortez mistook for beggars. They were holding a religious festival in honor of Quetzalcoatl, which was their name for the Golden Hearted, who had now become the Fair God of tradition. Long had they been expecting him to return to Cholula, and because Cortez had a fair complexion, and was accompanied by other white men they thought the Golden Hearted had come at last. The people lined the streets and roadways and not only wore garlands of flowers on their heads, but tossed bouquets to the soldiers, while the priests met them with music and swung incense up and down the cleanly-swept streets they passed through.
"What is the will of Quetzalcoatl?" they asked eagerly of Cortez.
"Do you come from Tlapalla?" they inquired of his followers.
"No," they were answered, "but we have a disease of the heart which only gold can cure."
Then the simple natives brought all the gold-dust and little trinkets they could find and gave to their visitors. Cortez thanked them, but said:
"This is not enough. We must have very much more."
"Then you would better ask our friend and ally, the great king, Montezuma. He has immense stores of it."
"Where is this great king, and this city of Tenochtitlan?"
"Farther to the west," they answered.
Shortly after this an embassy of nobles from the court of Montezuma appeared with rich presents and an invitation to Cortez to visit the king. None of them had ever seen a white man before, and they did not for a moment doubt that Cortez was the Golden Hearted, returned to claim his own, and they were very anxious to please him. Touching his brass helmet one of them said timidly: