Page:The Mastering of Mexico.djvu/202

166 on which Cortes assured him that nothing ever tired him and his companions. The monarch then took him by the hand and told him to look down on his great city, and all the other cities standing in the water and the many other towns on land round the lake. Indeed the accursed temple stood so high that we could see the great causeway leading to the city, and the aqueduct which provides the whole town with sweet water from Chapultepec. We could see also the bridges of the three causeways, and canoes speeding in the lake, coming with supplies of food and going with bales of merchandise. And in all the towns temples rose gleaming white, like towers and castles in our Spanish towns, and made a picture wonderful to see.

We looked down also on the great market place, and the crowds of people in it, so many buying and selling that the hum of their voices could be heard miles away. Some of our old soldiers who had been in Constantinople, and Rome, and many parts of the world, said they never had seen a market place so large, so crowded and so well arranged. Every kind of merchandise had its separate spot for sale—gold and silver wares, cotton and hennequen cloths, twisted thread, tanned and untanned skins of tigers, lions, red deer, wild cats and other beasts of prey, beans, sage, cacao and other vegetables, fowls, rabbits, deer, dogs, and other meats, fruit of