Page:The Mastering of Mexico.djvu/331

 

How Cortes ordered the towns to furnish us arrows and arrow-heads, and, before beginning the siege of Mexico, held a muster and published articles of war; and how having divided our troops, he ordered the three divisions to invest the city and break the aqueduct of Chapultepec; how the sloops aided in our daily battles and difficulties they met.

that the canal by which they were to pass into the lake had been broadened, and the sloops had been built and rigged with sails and oars, and each sloop fitted with spare oars for case of need, Cortes sent to all the allied towns that lay near Texcoco, asking that the people furnish in eight days eight thousand arrow heads of copper, made after Spanish points which were given them as models, and eight thousand arrows, also of a certain sort of wood, and in form like the Spanish arrows sent as patterns. At the end of the time they brought their work to our camp—more than fifty thousand arrowheads and as many thousand arrows—and the arrow-heads were even better than those we brought from Spain.

Cortes at once commanded Pedro Barba, leader of the crossbowmen, to divide arrows and copper