As the rough, way-hardened soldiers of Cortes came in sight of the great Lake of Tezcuco, with its fringe of white, well-ordered, flower-embowered villages, its dark groves of oak, cedar, and sycamores, and its richly-cultivated fields, they involuntarily came to a sudden halt, with first a dead silence, and then the air was rent with a simultaneous burst of ecstatic admiration.
"But behold!" exclaimed Juan de Cabrera with sudden bewilderment; "behold, Toro, the very islands on the bosom of yon fair lake are islands of enchantment!"
"How so?" queried Velasquez, pushing in his eager face between the two. "What new marvel hast discovered, Juan, where all is past belief?"
"Past belief, you may well say," returned the other. "I believe not that Hernando Cortes himself, even in his dreams, hath had thought of what he was to find out here. As I said before, I have cut the old world for aye; my home is henceforth here in fairy-land."
"Well, well," retorted Velasquez, "that is stale news now. Thou'st said that same every time, the past weeks, that thou hast caught sight of bright blossoms, bright eyes, or a palm tree. What hast seen now of novelty?"
"Why, his new home on a moving island," said Montoro, laughing. "Have I not guessed right, Cabrera?"
"That hast thou," was the satisfied answer. "Trust thine eyes, my Toro, to see farther through a deal board than the very wood-worm itself. Thine eyes and thy voice make some amends to thy friends for thy long face and scruples."
"I hope he thanks thee for thy compliment," ejaculated Velasquez, with his more short-sighted eyes roving here, there, and everywhere meantime. "But I do wish thou couldst answer a comrade's civil question, instead of indulging in questionable flatteries. What meanest thou by moving islands?"
"Just what I say," replied Juan de Cabrera, as the group of men moved slowly on down the mountain road towards the vast plain of Mexico, his eyes for the time diverted from the proud island city of Tenochtitlan to the chinampas, or wandering islands, being propelled by their owners from one part of the lake to another, as trade or inclination prompted.
These chinampas might be regarded as the market-gardens of the capital. Originally they were nothing but masses of earth loosened from the shore by the action of the water, and held together by the fibrous roots of the various plants flourishing upon them. Gathering these into rafts, tightly knit together, of reeds and rushes, the Aztecs had made for themselves artificial islands two or three hundred feet in length, on which were grown the fruits and vegetables for Tenochtitlan.