Page:The Conquest of Mexico Volume 1.djvu/490

 Page 101 (1).—This celebrated naturalist was sent by Philip II. to New Spain, and he employed several years in compiling a voluminous work on its various natural productions, with drawings illustrating them. Although the government is said to have expended sixty thousand ducats in effecting this great object, the volumes were not published till long after the author's death. In 1651, a mutilated edition of the part of the work relating to medical botany appeared at Rome. The original MSS. were supposed to have been destroyed by the great fire in the Escurial, not many years after. Fortunately, another copy, in the author's own hand, was detected by the indefatigable Muñoz, in the library of the Jesuits' College at Madrid, in the latter part of the last century; and a beautiful edition, from the famous press of Ibarra, was published in that capital, under the patronage of government, in 1790. (Hist. Plantarum, Prefatio.—Nic. Antonio Bibliotheca Hispana Nova [.Matriti, 1793], tom. ii. p. 432.) The work of Hernandez is a monument of industry and erudition, the more remarkable as being the first on this difficult subject. And after all the additional light from the labours of later naturalists, it still holds its place at a book of the highest authority, for the perspicuity, fidelity, and thoroughness, with which the multifarious topics in it are discussed.

Page 101 (2).—"Some of the terraces on which it stood," says Mr. Bullock, speaking of this palace, "are still entire, and covered with cement, very hard, and equal in beauty to that found in ancient Roman buildings. . . . The great church, which stands close by, is almost entirely built of the materials taken from the palace, many of the sculptured stones from which may be seen in the walls, though most of the ornaments are turned inwards. Indeed, our guide informed us, that whoever built a house at Tezcuco made the ruins of the palace serve as his quarry." (Six Months in Mexico, chap. 26.) Torquemada notices the appropriation of the materials to the same purpose.—Monarch. Ind., lib. 2, cap. 45.

Page 101 (3).—Thus, to punish the Chalcas for their rebellion, the whole population were compelled, women as well as men, says the chronicler so often quoted, to labour on the royal edifices, for four years together; and large granaries were provided with stores for their maintenance in the meantime.—Idem. Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 46.

Page 101 (4).—If the people in general were not much addicted to polygamy, the sovereign, it must be confessed,—and it was the same, we shall see, in Mexico,—made ample amends for any self-denial on the part of his subjects.

Page 102 (1).—The Egyptian priests managed the affair in a more courtly style, and while they prayed that all sorts of kingly virtues might descend on the prince, they threw the blame of actual delinquencies on his ministers; thus, "not by the bitterness of reproof," says Diodorus, "but by the allurements of praise, enticing him to an honest way of life."—Lib. I, cap. 70.

Page 102 (2).—"Quinientos y veinte escalones." Davilla Padilla, Historia de la Provincia de Santiago (Madrid, 1596), lib. 2, cap. 81. This writer, who lived in the sixteenth century, counted the steps himself. Those which were not cut in the rock were crumbling into ruins, as indeed every part of the establishment was even then far gone to decay.

Page 102 (3).—On the summit of the mount, according to Padilla, stood an image of a coyotl,— an animal resembling a fox,—which, according to tradition, represented an Indian famous for his fasts. It was destroyed by that stanch iconoclast, Bishop Zumarraga, as a relic of idolatry. (Hist. de Santiago, lib. 2, cap. 81.) This figure was, no doubt, the emblem of Nezahualcoyotl himself, whose name, as elsewhere noticed, signified "hungry fox."

Page 103 (1).—Bullock speaks of a "beautiful basin, twelve feet long by eight wide, having a well five feet by four, deep in the centre," etc. etc. Whether truth lies in the bottom of this well, is not so clear. Latrobe describes the baths as "two singular basins, perhaps two feet and a half in diameter, not large enough for any monarch bigger than Oberon to take a duck in." (Comp., Six Months in Mexico, chap. 26; and Rambler in Mexico, let. 7.) Ward speaks much