Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/283

 Rh fair Valley of Mexico—the fairest, it seemed to us, on which our eyes had ever gazed. The grand, old forest with its huge trees covered with long, grey moss, hanging down like a funeral pall, and the winding road leading up to the castle, was at our feet. Up the slope to the rear of the castle, charged the victorious American troops, on the memorable day when the last bulwark of the unfortunate republic fell. All around the palace, or castle, were the beautiful gardens, filled with blooming flowers which Maximilian and Carlotta—I never heard her called "poor Carlotta" in Mexico—had planted.



Out by the gate-way stands the scarred and blackened tree, at whose foot—so tradition says, and probably tells the truth—Guatamozin, "heroic in the defence of his empire and sublime in his martyrdom," (as the legend on the monument just raised to the honor of his memory, on the banks of the grand canal where his final defeat took place, by the order of the Aguntemento of Mexico, tells us,) was put to cruel torture by the ruthless Spaniards, in the vain effort to make him reveal the hiding place of the treasures for which they are