File:The true story book (1893) (14729704496).jpg

Identifier: truestorybook00lang3 (find matches)
Title: The true story book
Year: 1893 (1890s)
Authors: Lang, Andrew, 1844-1912
Subjects: History Adventure and adventurers
Publisher: London New York : Longmans, Green

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nd often upon the edge of precipices three thousand feetin depth. After three days of this dreary travelling the armyemerged into a more genial climate; they had reached the greattableland which spreads out for hundreds of miles along the crests ofthe Cordilleras, more than seven thousand miles above the sea-level.The vegetation of the torrid and temperate regions had of coursedisappeared, but the fields were carefully cultivated. Many of thecrops were unknown to the Spaniards, but they recognised maizeand aloes, and various kinds of cactus. Suddenly the troops cameupon what seemed to be a populous city, even larger than Cempoalla,and with loftier and more substantial buildings, of stone and lime.There were thirteen teocallis in the town, and in one place in the THE CONQUEST OF MONTEZUMAS EMPIRE 249 suburbs one of the Spaniards counted the stored-up skulls of ahundred thousand sacrificed victims. The lord of the town ruledover twenty thousand vassals ; he was a tributary to Montezuma,
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and there was a strong Mexican garrison in the place. This wasprobably the reason of his receiving Cortes and his army very coldly,and vaunting the grandeur of the Mexican emperor, who could, hedeclared, muster thirty great vassals, each of whom commanded a 250 THE CONQUEST OF MONTEZUMAS EMPIRE hundred thousand men. In answer to the inquiries of Cortes, he toldhim about Montez-uma and his capital. How more than twentythousand prisoners of war were sacrificed every year upon the altarsof his gods, and how the city stood in the midst of a great lake, andwas approached by long causeways connected in places by woodenbridges, which when raised cut off all communication with thecountry —and many other strange things which were not of a kind toreassure the minds of the Spaniards. They hardly knew whetherto believe the old cacique or not, but at any rate the wonders theyheard made them, as one of their cavaliers said, only the moreearnest to prove the adventure, despeiate as it might appear

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