Page:Face to Face With the Mexicans.djvu/192

186 According to Humboldt, Chapultepec rises above the plain to the remarkable height of 7,626 feet. "It was chosen by the young viceroy, Galvez, as the site of a villa (Chateau de Plaisance) for himself and his successors.

"Of the fifty viceroys who have governed Mexico from 1535 to 1808, one alone was born in America, the Peruvian, Don Juan de Auiña de Casa Fuerte (1722-1734), a disinterested man and good administrator. Some of my readers," he continues, "will perhaps be interested in knowing that a descendant of Christopher Columbus and a descendant of King Montezuma were among the viceroys of Spain. Don Pedro Nuño Colon, Duke of Veraguas, made his entry at Mexico in 1673, and died six weeks afterward. The viceroy, Don Joseph Sarmiento Valladares, Count de Montezuma, governed from 1697 to 1701."

A glance either way revives a history which fills the mind with thoughts too sad for utterance. This noble hill of solid porphyry was the country place of Montezuma and his ancestors; and since then no marked event has ever occurred, within access of it, in which the grand old castle has not played a prominent part. On entering the gates, turn to the right and you are soon far around the circle, where the sweet, soft air sighs through the cypress trees, and seems to speak in broken accents of the "voiceless past."

Near at hand is the aqueduct, built by Montezuma, now bordered with long grass and wild-flowers with their heads drooping downward, and through which, despite the decay and havoc of centuries, the water trickles, sweet as ever.

Turn another way, and see the stone steps which Montezuma had carved in the hill, then the only mode of ascent; and his cave, said to have no termination. Near this point begins the drive constructed by Maximilian, winding around the mountain, and greatly facilitating access to the castle—now the residence of the President, and the West Point of Mexico.

The architecture of the fortress is grand and imposing. With immense portholes in its circular towers, and with its massive rounded