Page:Mexico as it was and as it is.djvu/183

 138 step without treading on them; the lake and canals were filled with them, and the stench was intolerable.

"When all those who had been able, quitted the city, we went to examine it, which was as I have described; and some poor creatures were crawling about in different stages of the most offensive disorders, the consequences of famine and improper food. There was no water; the ground had been torn up and the roots gnawed. The very trees were stripped of their bark; yet, notwithstanding they usually devoured their prisoners, no instance occurred when, amidst all the famine and starvation of this siege, they preyed upon each other. The remnant of the population went, at the request of the conquered Guatimozin, to the neighboring villages, until the town could be purified and the dead removed." Cortéz affirms, that more than fifty thousand perished.

Nor was this all: there seems to have been a disposition, on the part of the conqueror, to obliterate the nation from the face of the earth. As his army advanced gradually into the town in the various attacks made upon it, the buildings were leveled to the ground; but when the final conflict had ended, the bigotry of the priesthood was added to the ferocity of the soldier, and hand in hand they went to the work of destruction. After they had secured every article of intrinsic value,—palace and temple were given up to ruin. The materials of which the houses of the nobles and wealthy citizens had been built, were used to fill the canals. Every idol was broken that could be destroyed, while those that were too large to be mutilated by the hand or by gunpowder, were buried in the lake or the squares; and finally, every historical record, paper, and painting, that could be found, was torn and burned, with a fanaticism as ignorant and stupid as it was zealous and bigoted.

From that time, of course, but little has descended to us, except a few fragments of manuscripts, which are now preserved in the royal collections of Berlin, Dresden, Vienna and the Vatican; the idols and images with which the Museum is filled; and the magnificent ruins of Palenque, Uxmal, and Guatamala.

It is impossible for us not to sympathize with the conquered in the fall and subjection of their Empire, notwithstanding the cruelty of their worship. Cortéz was, at best, but a great pirate, around whom a troop of needy adventurers and brave soldiers had gathered, with all the appetite for conquest and the temper of freebooters. It is undeniable, that he was a man of extraordinary capacity. Brave, sagacious, cool, enduring, intrepid; a statesman, orator, historian, soldier, poet; he united in himself every manly attribute and accomplishment, and he added to them an indomitable resolution, which quailed as little before the magnitude or danger of an enterprise, as before the multitudes who were sent to encounter him. He was worthy of a better cause, and the founding of a greater empire.

As for Montezuma, he seemed to have had a fatal presentiment of his country's destiny, from the period of his first interview with Cortéz; and