After I had surveyed the salt-works and the glassworks, I turned my horse's head toward Mexico by the road along the eastern shore, so that I made the complete circuit of Lake Tezcuco.
Thus far my visit to the royal city of Tezcuco had been perfectly successful, except in the attempts made to convince the young Englishman that I was not a dead-shot with the rifle; and I started home with a slight shade upon my veracity for denying my ability to pierce the centre of the bull's-eye. But otherwise it was a disagreeable parting to all of us. As I returned by the east side of the lake, the splendid high farming-lands that extend from the shore to the foot of the mountain were strikingly in contrast with the flatness and barrenness of the plain on the water-side, which is so slightly elevated above the level of the salt water that a few inches of rise in the laguna spreads out an immense sheet of saline water, and yet there is not a solitary evaporating vat where there is an unlimited demand for the evaporated article at fourteen shillings the aroba.
Cortéz speaks of the fine fields of corn on the east side of the lake. But they could not have been finer in his day than they are at present, though they furnished him with the supplies that supported his army. I reached the head of Tezcuco at noontide, where the heavy water of the salt lake was driving up toward the fresh water, as described by Cortéz, but it was under the pressure of a strong north wind.
THE AZTEC CAUSEWAYS.
Now that I am on the new causeway, broad and spacious like all the others, it may be well to conclude the discussion of the physical condition of this valley by determining the size of the old Aztec causeways.
An island embosomed in a marsh has always formed a favorite retreat for an Indian tribe, whether among the everglades of Florida, or the wild-rice swamps of north-western Canada. Such a retreat is still more desirable when, in addition to the security it affords from an enemy, it is likewise a resort for wild ducks, as was and is the case with the laguna of the Mexican valley. Hence, probably, the Aztecs selected this place as the site of their village; and to reach it, it was necessary to make one or more footpaths across the marsh. As the Aztecs had no beasts of burden, this must have been a task of no little magnitude. To have made it thirty feet wide would not only have been a work of immense difficulty, but would have destroyed the defensive character of their position. Still, we can, upon this occasion, afford to be a little liberal with the statements of Cortéz, as we have had to cut his hundreds of thousands of warriors down to a few thousand of miserably-armed Indians, and reduce his magnificent cities to small Indian villages. In order to make the island of Mexico at all inhabitable, we have had to reduce his lakes from navigable basins of twelve feet or more in depth to mere evaporating ponds. His floating islands have been transformed into garden-beds built upon the mud; and his canals have sunk to mere ditches. Now I propose to be liberal to the old Conquistador in the matter of his famous causeways, and will therefore admit that they might have been twelve feet in width—as broad as the tow-path of the Erie Canal.
CHAPTER XIX.
The Street of Tacuba.—The Spaniards and the Indian Women.—The Retreat of Cortéz.—The Aqueducts of Mexico.—The English and American Burying-grounds.—The Protestant President.—The rival Virgins.—An Image out of Favor.—The Aztecs and the Spaniards.
As I rode along the street to the gate and causeway of Tacuba, over which Cortéz retreated on the "sorrowful night" (triste noche), I naturally fell into reflections upon the righteous retribution that overtook a portion of the Spanish robbers on that night, and upon the mysterious ways of Providence in allowing Cortéz and a remnant to escape being burned alive by the Indians after the infamous lives which, by their own admissions, they had been leading in the city. The Indians had made a feeble resistance when Alvarado murdered their chiefs, and had cringed into submission when Cortéz returned. But now their wrongs had reached that point where even Aztecs could endure no more. Their cup of iniquity seemed full, when Cortéz, who had left a wife in Cuba, sent to the little village of Tacuba, called by Diaz Tlacupa, to fetch thence some "women of his household, among whom was the daughter of Montezuma [he had already one daughter of Montezuma in his power] whom he had given in charge of the King of Tlacupa, her relative, when he marched against Narvaez."[36] ] The women being rescued, Cortéz afterward sent Ordaz, with four hundred men, which brought on hostilities that ended in this night retreat.