Page:Young Folks History Of Mexico.pdf/113

Rh [A. D. 1500]. The Mexicans swept their armies south-ward, as far as Guatemala, nearly nine hundred miles distant. An Aztec army of 60,000 men cleared the country of the Miztecs and Zapotecs as far as the sacred city of Mitla, where was the burial-place of the Zapotec kings, and sent its priests to be sacrificed on the altar of Mexico. There was one Zapotec king whom they could not defeat, Cocioyeza, who fortified a great plateau, defended by ravines and barrancas, and twice defeated the Mexican armies sent against him. The King of Mexico was glad to conclude a peace with him, and he also gave him one of the royal princesses in marriage. In fact, the Zapotecan king fell in love with this princess, a sister of Montezuma, before he saw her, for she appeared to him in a vision as he was taking his bath, and after exhibiting to him a peculiar mark on her hand, disappeared, saying she would return when sent for. When he sent his officers to select a queen for him from the Mexican court, he instructed them to look for the beautiful princess with the peculiar mark in the palm of her hand. At the court, they noticed one of the beauteous damsels frequently raising her hand to arrange her hair, so as to expose the palm of her hand. Of course, she was the one the Zapotec had seen in the vision, and, of course, they were married and lived happily together. King Montezuma, her brother, when he came to the throne, tried to persuade her to poison her husband,—after the fashion of that dark period,—but she refused, thinking, very wisely, that a royal spouse alive was worth more to her than one dead, and a royal brother into the bargain!

It is a pleasure, at last, to be able to chronicle the death of that wicked old monarch, Ahuitzotl, who departed, full of honors and much lamented, to his fathers. He left