Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/434

420, ordering, on behalf of the Republic of Tlaxcala, eighty thousand picked men, to march with Cortez against Mexico. This was translated by the order of Cortez himself. Other documents beautifully illuminated, signed "Yo el Rey" (I the King,) and of the time of the Conquest, are there in abundance, with hundreds of later date, hardly less interesting. We could have spent days in looking over these curious old records of the dead and now almost forgotten past, but had only an hour or two at our command.

Among the curiosities in this room, is the war-drum of the Tlaxcalans, a curiously carved and hollowed log of dark, hard wood, like rose-wood, some thirty inches in length and six or eight in thickness, of which a full description and good illustration is given by Prescott. Two lips left on the upper surface, have play enough to give off sharp musical notes when struck by the hand, or with a stick, and the instrument, in the hand of a first-class professor of Tlaxcalan music, would doubtless be made to produce as inspiring strains as the old Scotch bagpipes, though I think one of our modern military bands in full play would discourage him.

One old document is particularly illustrative of the character of the pious people who spread religion and desolation through the land of the Aztecs. It recites, that after the conquest, a sub-tribe of the Tlaxcalans used to bring in large quanties of gold-dust from some placer in the vicinity, the locality of which they refused to disclose. They gave enough of this gold to the Church to make and pay for the crown of the Virgin of Guadaloupe at Mexico, which cost eighty thousand dollars. The Spaniards, excited by the sight of this wealth, took some of the Indians, tied them up in