"Know ye, friends and brothers!" continued Cortes, "that the devil has, at last, waked up in the infidel city; blood has been shed,—the blood of Spaniards as well as of pagan Mexicans,—and, at this moment, Alvarado is besieged in the palace by the whole hordes of the valley; and he swears to me, by these Tlascalan messengers, that unless I render him speedy assistance, he must die of starvation, or perish under the sword of the barbarians. So God speed us to the Venice of the New World, the Babylon of the mountains! The gold shall not be snatched out of our hands, nor the fame blotted from our histories: we have this good day numbers enow to chase the imps from the islands, and to tumble the gods from their temples; and so will we, in the name of God and St. Peter, Amen!—God speed us to Tenochtitlan!"
The shout that answered this pious and valiant rhapsody from the pyramid and the square, gave note of the zeal with which his followers, both old and new, were prepared to second the resolution of their leader.
CHAPTER XXI.
A history of moral epidemics, drawn up by a philosophic pen, would add much to our knowledge of the mysteries of human character and human power, as well as of the probable contingencies of human destiny. In the prosecution of such a subject, besides tracing the development of those little causes which, in former days, have spread their effects from man to man, until whole communities have laboured under a disease resulting in revolutions of the most stupendous nature, we should, doubtless, perceive many of those points of susceptibility and chains of impulsion, which render men the creatures of change; and which, being definitely understood and wisely influenced, might at once put it in the power of philanthropists to govern the operations of reform in such manner as to avoid the evils of ill-considered innovation. Religion and liberty have both come to us as diseases; and the propagation of them throughout the lands of the heathen and the slave, is yet a measure of pain and peril, because we have not considered, or not yet learned, how to address ourselves to infirmity. What man will not say, that the enthusiasm which cumbered the sands of Syria with the blood of the Crusaders, might not, if properly directed, have brought light and happiness to all Europe? or that the fever, which has left the revolution of France a horror on the page of history, might not, under the guidance of a less speculative philosophy, have covered her valleys and filled her cities with security and peace? Enthusiasm comes and goes; and because we know not enough of its weak and governable qualities to direct it in the paths of justice and virtue, it is allowed yet to fill the world with wrong and misery; and, misapplied to the purposes of glory, avarice, and fanaticism, the engine which God has given us to advance our civilization, is still the preserver of barbarism.
In the facility with which the aboriginal empires of America were subverted by a handful of hotheaded Spaniards, mankind has been willing to find a proof of the savage imperfection of their institutions. In the case of Mexico, at least, this testimony is deceptive. If we remember that the tribes of Anahuac, like the other races of America, were struggling against obstacles which did not impede the advancement of other nations, we shall be surprised at the point of civilization they had reached. Heaven had denied all the useful domestic animals to America. The bison, which is perhaps not altogether untameable, roamed only over the prairies and the forest lands of the north, among tribes that were yet in the bottom class of humanity. The horse and the ass added not their strength to the labours of man, and the little llama, bearing the burden of its master over the icy Cordilleras of the south, was but a poor substitute for the camel of the desert, to which it has been compared. Accident, or the knowledge of a thousand years, can alone teach men the use of that metal which will bring him civilization, when gold will not buy it; but the discovery even of the properties of iron will soon follow the invention of an alphabet, however rude or hieroglyphic. The Mexicans could already record and perpetuate their discoveries. Without the aid of iron and domestic animals, they were advancing in refinement. Civilization had dawned, and was shedding a light, constantly augmenting, over their valleys; and, apart from these deficiencies, saving only, perhaps, additionally, in the article of religion, which was not yet purged of its abominations, (and which, perhaps, flung more annual victims on the altars than did, in after days, even the superstition of their conquerors, in Spain,) the Mexican empire was not far behind some of the monarchies of Europe in that method, purpose, and stability of institutions, both political and domestic, which are esteemed the evidences of civilization.
A moral epidemic nerved the arm of the invaders, another paralyzed the strength of the invaded. Superstition covered the Spaniard with armour stronger than his iron mail, and left the Mexican naked and defenceless; and, in addition, the disease of disaffection, creeping from the extremities to the centre of the empire, added its weight to the lethargy of religious fear. When Hernan Cortes set out on his march, the second time, against Tenochtitlan, believing that God had chosen him to be a scourge to the misbeliever, he knew well that thousands and tens of thousands of malecontents were burning to join his standard. Mexico was the Rome of the New World,—a compound of hostile elements, an union of tribes and states subdued and conjoined by the ambition of a single city, but not yet so closely cemented as to defy the shocks of a Gothic irruption. What might have been the condition of the empire of Montezuma, if the divine ray which conducted the Genoese pilot over the Atlantic, had been reserved for an adventurer of the present day, it is impossible to determine; but, it is quite clear, its condition was such at the time of the invasion, that, had not the indecision of its monarch, founded on such a conjuncture of coincidences as might have confounded a more enlightened prince, entirely repressed its powers of resistance, no armies, raised by the Spanish colonists, or even by their European master, could have penetrated beyond the shores; and the destiny of Cortes would have been written in letters as few and as obscure as those which have recorded the fate of Valdivia among the less refined, but better united Araucanians of Chili.
The heart of the leader was bold, the spirits of his confederates full of resolution and hope; and notwithstanding the evil intelligence that their victims were wakening to a knowledge of their strength, and confirming their audacity in the blood they had already shed, the united followers of Narvaez and Hernan Cortes began their march over the mountains with alacrity and joy.
The novelties and wonders that were each day disclosed, were remarked by no one with more satisfaction than by Don Amador de Leste. He rejoiced when, ascending among the mountains, the fens and sand-hills of the coast were exchanged for picturesque lakes and romantic crags; when the oak woods and pine forests began to stretch their verdant carpets over the hill-sides; when, standing among the colossal ruins of some shivered peak, he cast his eye over glen and valley, glittering with verdure and fertility, far away to the majestic ridges over whose hazy sides tumbled the foamy fall, or crept the lazy cloud, while among their gorges glistened the distant cones of snow. Now he admired the ferns, lifting their arborescent heads, like palms, among other strange trees; now, as he exchanged the luxuriant slopes for those volcanic deserts which strew the base of Perote with lava and cinders, he beheld the broad nopal, and the gigantic maguey, rearing their massive leaves over the fissures, while a scorched forest withered and rotted above. Sometimes, while pursuing his weary way over these mountain paramos, or deserts, he advanced bewildered, as what seemed a fair and spacious lake withdrew its vapoury waters from before him, and revealed a parched and barren expanse of sand. The journey was an alternation of mountain and valley, forest and plain, with sometimes a pleasant little Indian village, and, twice or thrice, a town of no mean magnitude and splendour, rising in pleasant nooks among the horrors of the waste.
Over this rugged region it was not possible to drag the ordnance and heavy stores, with which Cortes was now abundantly provided, without much labour and delay; and it was not until about the time of the summer solstice, more than a month after the fall of Zempoala, that, at the close of a pleasant day, the new invaders laid their eyes, for the first time, on Tlascala,—the capital of that warlike republic, which, for the singular object, as certain historians have conjectured, of preserving an enemy to exercise their armies, as well as to furnish victims for their gods, the Mexican monarchs permitted to subsist in the heart of their empire.