Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/500



T Apizaco, a station on the Mexican Railway, you leave the main line and take a branch to Puebla. Your ticket has a stamp on it bearing the likeness of one of the most villanous faces it is possible for man to wear. I suppose it is that of some old revolutionary hero, whom the Mexicans have shot, and then repented themselves, and made amends in this way for the injury done, as that is their usual custom. At the small station of Santa Anna, you leave the train for Tlascala,—not the town of forty thousand inhabitants which Cortés compared to the most flourishing cities of Spain, for the entire district has now scarcely that number. Probably not more than five thousand people now inhabit this ancient town. In the Plaza, which is also a very pleasant garden, is a fountain, the brim of which bears a long inscription, stating that it was erected by a grand Virey in 1646. Here is something savoring of antiquity at the very start; further research will take us back to the very beginning of Tlascalan history,—to those days when the Spanish soldiers were honored guests of this very town, when Montezuma was quaking with fear in anticipation of their arrival.

In the municipal palace. El Palacio, are four paintings, bearing names which the student of history will recognize at once as those of allies of Cortés, after he had left behind him the hot coast region and had entered and finally won to his cause the valiant little republic of Tlascala. They are "true and faithful pictures" of Vicente Xicotencatl, Don Lorenzo Mazicatzin, Don Gonzalo Tlanexolotzin, and Bartolome Zitlalpopoca, as they appeared to Cortés in 1519. A score of idols cumber the floor of the chamber containing the