Page:Young Folks History Of Mexico.pdf/60

 54 well, but married one of their noble virgins to his son, Ilhuicatl. From this union descended those famous kings of Mexico, who ruled the valley over a hundred years later.

It was during the reign of one of the first Chichimec kings, who, you will remember, entered Anahuac a century earlier, in about the year 1100. The king then in power, either Xolotl, or his son Nopaltzin, let them wander where they liked and settle where they would, having nothing to fear from such a wretched band of savages as the Mexicans were at that time.

Ah! if he could have foreseen the height which those despised Aztecs were to attain, and that even his own kingdom was one day to lie prostrate at their feet, do you not think he would have killed them, then and there?

As it was, however, he afforded them no protection—as, indeed, why should he?—and they suffered much from the persecutions of petty tribes established in the valley before them. They wandered from point to point about the great Lake Tezcoco, and finally made a stand at Chapultepec, a rocky hill, situated on the western border of the lake.

[A. D. 1245.] In the annals of the Mexicans, Chapultepec is called the "hill of the grasshopper"—chapol meaning grasshopper, and tepec hill. They gave it this name either because they found grasshoppers there in abundance, or because they were obliged to subsist upon them as their principal food.

This place, Chapultepec, became famous in later years as the resort and the burial-place of the Mexican kings, and just about six hundred years later a decisive battle was fought there between the soldiers of two nations that at that time had not been heard of,—the troops of the Republic of Mexico and the United States!