Page:About Mexico - Past and Present.djvu/250

242 it was his request that the country he had conquered should bear this title. Strange to say, however, though Mexico rose from its ashes a Spanish city, with so many radical changes, the conquerors never seem to have thought of giving this place a Christian name. It was at first Tenochtitlan—"Stone-Cactus Place;" now, as though to show that it was as truly heathen as ever, it was called Mexitli, after an Aztec god.

Mexico was now more of a fortress than ever, though it did not cover so much ground as formerly it had done. All the canals were filled up and the streets laid out wide and straight. Day and night the work went on until it was completed. Like the children of Israel who built the cities of old Egypt, the lives of these Aztec masons and carpenters were "made bitter with hard bondage, in mortar, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field." On the foundations of the old teocallis rose a great cathedral. The Aztecs had boasted that human blood and precious stones had been freely mingled in the mortar of their temple; the building which replaced it, though dedicated to the Prince of peace, cost them far more in human life and treasure.

In time nearly all the country known at the beginning of the sixteenth century as Mexico was conquered by Spain. A few wandering tribes at the North continued to defy all attempts at subjugation, and still lived by the chase. Village Indians—who, as far as possible, have maintained their old laws and customs, in spite of foreign intruders—have always boasted with a laudable pride that no Spanish, or even Aztec, banner ever floated over their lands. These are tilled in common now as then. These people still speak their old dialects and refuse to learn any other, communication for the purposes