Bright days in sunny lands . all the plain. Be-yond that, Coyoacan, older than Mexico, long the resi-dence of Cortez, the first capital of his government;and very near that spot lies Churubusco, seat of a gal-lant defence by Mexican troops in August, 1847,against the American army under Generals Smith,Worth and Twiggs. Churubusco had a temple tofierce Huitzilopochtli and had a bad name as theabode of evil spirits. But the chief spectacles are yetto be told: those two great peaks, isolated, white withsnow, sublime with the thrill of the ages, believed bythe Indians to be the mountains of their
Bright days in sunny lands . all the plain. Be-yond that, Coyoacan, older than Mexico, long the resi-dence of Cortez, the first capital of his government;and very near that spot lies Churubusco, seat of a gal-lant defence by Mexican troops in August, 1847,against the American army under Generals Smith,Worth and Twiggs. Churubusco had a temple tofierce Huitzilopochtli and had a bad name as theabode of evil spirits. But the chief spectacles are yetto be told: those two great peaks, isolated, white withsnow, sublime with the thrill of the ages, believed bythe Indians to be the mountains of their gods—Popo-catepetl, the hill that smokes, and Ixtaccihuatl, the white woman, or wife of the first-named vol-canic monster; the one 17,782 feet above the sea, morethan 2,000 feet higher than Mont Blanc, the other 16,-060 feet, each massive, stately, inspiring, Cortez climbed Popocatepetl, he made the first-known ascent of a perpetually-crowned snowpeak inthe world, and the sulphur he took out of it for use in. SURROUNDINGS OF TENOCHTITLAN 385 making gunpowder proved the shrewdness of hismind. I doubt if any Indian had ever cUmbed thatmountain before Cortez: to the Aztec it was the en-trance to the infernal regions, or the mouth of a cruelgod, and they were in constant awe of it. How could one wonder that here, on this height,nay anywhere in this valley, with those twin mountainsever in sight, a royal race should sit down to rest. Whata serene and salubrious home! What was there moreto be desired than this rich valley, which they couldirrigate in summer until abundant harvests grew, andwhere the wonderful maguey plant gave meat, drink,clothing and almost everything needed by this curiousand hardy race. The maguey must come in for a de-scription later; Mexico would never have been com-plete, nor quite as peculiar as it is, without it. As Ilooked again over this valley, I saw, however, howdiflferent it looked now from the days of Cortez. Thenthe waters of Texcoco c
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Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectvoyagesandtravels
