Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1.djvu/356

332 necessary to subdue it, but he does not mention any one building which he sought to save, as he must infallibly have done, had he been burning an Alhambra or a Doge's Palace or been forced to blow up a Santa Sophia. It seems impossible that any one should seriously pretend that the waters of Texcoco's lake mirrored such façades as are reflected in the canals of Venice, or that there was a Rialto among the bridges, so hotly contested by the Spaniards. Orozco y Berra wisely reproves the comparison which Alaman draws between Mexico and Rome as notoriously misplaced. But, between the dazzling word pictures of Prescott and Helps on the one hand, and on the other Alaman's depressing sketch of a squalid town of hovels, inhabited by bloodthirsty cannibals, there is still room for a beautiful city in which dwelt a sovereign, amidst surroundings of interesting splendour.

Even without conscious intention to mislead, it was inevitable that the Spaniards should fall into exaggeration in describing the city of Mexico; first, because they necessarily used the same terms to portray what they saw as they would have used in describing Rome, Paris, or Constantinople; second, because the contrast between such Indian towns as they had seen and the capital was undoubtedly very great, and their long years of rough life, perilous voyages, and the absence at times even of shelter from the elements, made any large town with some system of order, with houses having court-yards, gardens and embroidered hangings, seem worthy to be compared with great cities elsewhere seen and dimly remembered; and lastly because Mexico was unquestionably a very beautiful city. It could hardly have been otherwise in such a situation, and the Spaniards, not stopping to analyse wherein its charms lay, fell into the easy error of attributing them to architectural excellence and grandeur, which were really wanting.

Solis adopts the conquerors' style, without having their excuse and, were he writing of the Courts of Leo X., or Louis XIV., he could hardly use other language than he does in describing Montezuma and his household.

The very ignorance and naïveté of the conquerors are good warrants for the truth of much that they wrote, for as they were illiterate men (even Cortes had but a scanty store of learning, gathered during his brief course of two careless years at Salamanca) without sufficient knowledge to invent descriptions of the Mexican laws, customs, religion, and institutions, the facts which they state, and in which they agree, are indubitable. The Aztec Empire possessed some highly developed institutions; to mention but one, there was the system of couriers or the post, which kept up daily and rapid communication between the capital and the provinces, and that at a time when no country in Europe possessed anything equalling it.

Their religion was established with a regular hierarchy, and a calendar of festivals, which were observed with a really admirable ritual, marred only by the barbarity of certain rites; their deities were gloomy