Page:About Mexico - Past and Present.djvu/191



T was on the morning of November 8, 1519, that from the top of Ilhuatca the army of Cortez saw what seemed to their dazzled eyes a landscape in Fairyland. Snow-capped mountains enclosed a valley rich in bloom and verdure, with clear lakes laughing through the endless summer of a tropical year. In this crystal setting rose a capital worthy of any dream of the far-famed Atlantis. Miles of wide, clean streets radiating from the gates of the colossal temple were lined with massive stone edifices having walls of glittering stucco and terraced roofs abloom with flowers. These houses were the homes of at least three hundred thousand people. A fringe of beautiful island-gardens were seen dotting the lakes, spacious and well-ordered market-places, canals alive with boats, aqueducts whose ruins still attest the superior skill of those ancient masons, parks and pleasure-grounds, and, towering above all, the great pyramidal temple, altar-crowned and smoking day and night like the lofty peaks which marked the sky-line of the landscape.

In spite of the cringing terror which Montezuma had lately betrayed in his messages to them, the soldiers of Cortez, gazing at all this splendor, dreaded to grapple with a people whose civilization seemed not only to equal,