[16] Clavigero, The History of Mexico, Cullen transl., vol. II, p. 232, London, 1787.
[17] Saville, The Goldsmith’s Art in Ancient Mexico, op. cit.
[18] Peter Martyr, op. cit., vol. II, p. 46.
[19] Las Casas, Historia de las Indias, tomo IV, cap. CXXI, pp. 284-286, Madrid ed., 1876.
[20] Fr. Bernardino de Sahagun, Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España, Bustamante ed., lib. 12, caps, II-VI, pp. 5-12, Mexico, 1829.
Notes to Chapter III. The two places mentioned here, Naulitlantoztlan and Mictlanquactle, are given by Torquemada (op. cit., lib. IV, cap. XIII, p. 379) as four different towns. Nauhtla and Toztla, the first two, are recognizable as being combined into one place-name by Sahagun. This is also the case with Mictla and Quauhtla, the third and fourth towns of Torquemada, the Mictlanquactle of Sahagun. Brasseur de Bourbourg transforms them to Nauhtlan, Tochtlan, and Mictlan-Quauhtla, in which he is followed by Orozco y Berra.
Vigil, the editor of Tezozomoc, states that the town of Mictlancuauhtla has disappeared, but in a map or plan of Vera Cruz in the collection of Icazbalceta, sent in 1580 to Philip II by the alcalde Alvaro Patiño, the place is still mentioned, under a corrupted form of the name, as Metlangutla.
The name of the five lords sent by Montezuma to receive Cortés, conceived to be Quetzalcoatl, are spelled differently by Torquemada (op. cit., P-379), and they more closely approach the orthography of Molina’s dictionary. They are, Yohualychan, Tepuztecatl, Tizahua, Huehuetecatl, and Hueycamecateca.
Notes to Chapter VI. This Xicalanco is not to be confused with the Mexican colonial town of the same name near the Laguna de Términos, Tabasco. A branch of the Nahuan Mexican people called Xicalancas from the name of their first ruler, Xicalancatl, settled on the coast of Vera Cruz in the region between the present city of Vera Cruz and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.
Torquemada relates that the messengers, on leaving the ship of Cortés, “paddled rapidly away, and came to a little island called Xicalanco, where they ate, and rested a little, and they left there and came to a town on the seashore called Tecpantlayacac; from there they went to Cuetlaxtla, which is some leagues in the interior, where they spent the night; the lords and chief of the town begged them to remain there that day and rest, but they replied that the need for speed for their journey was great.”—Op. cit., lib. IV, cap. XIV, p. 384.