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o these habitations, where
they remained until they were married.

The powerful Motecusuma had also a number of dancers and clowns: some
danced in stilts, tumbled, and performed a variety of other antics for
the monarch's entertainment: a whole quarter of the city was inhabited
by these performers, and their only occupation consisted in such like
performances. Lastly, Motecusuma had in his service great numbers of
stone-cutters, masons, and carpenters, who were solely employed in the
royal palaces.[57] Above all, I must not forget to mention here his
gardens for the culture of flowers, trees, and vegetables, of which
there were various kinds. In these gardens were also numerous baths,
wells, basins, and ponds full of limpid water, which regularly ebbed and
flowed. All this was enlivened by endless varieties of small birds,
which sang among the trees. Also the plantations of medical plants and
vegetables are well worthy of our notice: these were kept in proper
order by a large body of gardeners. All the baths, wells, ponds, and
buildings were substantially constructed of stonework, as also the
theatres where the singers and dancers performed. There were upon the
whole so many remarkable things for my observation in these gardens and
throughout the whole town, that I can scarcely find words to express the
astonishment I felt at the pomp and splendour of the Mexican monarch.

In the meantime, I am become as tired in noting down these things as the
kind reader will be in perusing them: I will, therefore, close this
chapter, and acquaint the reader how our general, accompanied by many of
his officers, went to view the Tlatelulco, or great square of Mexico; on
which occasion we also ascended the great temple, where stood the idols
Tetzcatlipuca and Huitzilopochtli. This was the first time Cortes left
his head-quarters to perambulate the city.

[52] This was something like our chocolate, and prepared in the same
way, but with this difference, that it was mixed with the boiled dough
of maise, and was drunk cold. (p. 230.)

[53] Respecting the custom of smoking among the Mexicans, Humboldt gives
the following, in his work on New Spain: "The Mexicans called tobacco
_yetl_, which they not only considered a remedy against toothach, cold
in the head, and bowel complaints, but they likewise used it as a
luxury, by smoking and snuffing it. At Motecusuma's court it was used as
a narcotic, not only after dinner, but also after breakfast, to produce
a comfortable nap, as is still the custom in many districts of America.
The leaves were rolled together like cigars, and then stuck in tubes
made of silver, wood, or of shell." (p. 231.)

[54] The revenue of Motecusuma we know consisted of the natural products
of the country, and what was produced by the industry of his subjects.
Respecting the payment of tribute, we find the following story in
Torquemada: "During the abode of Motecusuma among the Spaniards, in the
palace of his father, Alonso de Ojeda one day espied in a certain
apartment of the building a number of small bags tied up. He imagined at
first that they were filled with gold dust, but on opening one of them,
what was his astonishment to find it quite full of lice? Ojeda, greatly
surprised at the discovery he had made, immediately communicated what he
had seen to Cortes, who then asked Marina and Aguilar for some
explanation. They informed him that the Mexicans had such a sense of
their duty to pay tribute to their monarch, that the poorest and meanest
of the inhabitants, if they possessed nothing better to present to their
king, daily cleaned their persons, and saved all the lice they caught,
and that when they had a good store of these, they laid them in bags at
the feet of their monarch. Torquemada further remarks, that his reader
might think these bags were filled with small worms (gasanillos), and
not with lice; but appeals to Alonso de Ojeda, and another of Cortes'
soldiers, named Alonso de Mata, who were eyewitnesses of the fact."

This story, no doubt, is founded on something like truth, and most
probably these bags were filled with the coccus cacti, the famous
cochineal insect, then unknown to the Spaniards, who might easily have
mistaken them in a dried state for lice. (p. 231.)

[55] This weapon, called by the Mexicans maquahuitl, was much dreaded by
the Spaniards; and the historian Acosta relates that the Mexicans would
cut off the head of a horse with it at one blow. (p. 231.)

[56] Alonso Berruguete, a Spanish artist, who rose to great eminence in
painting, architecture, and sculpture. He received great protection from
Charles the Fifth, who employed him in considerable works in the
Alhambra of Granada and elsewhere. (p. 233.)

[57] Bernal Diaz, unfortunately, gives no description of Motecusuma's
palace; we will therefore give Torquemada's account of this remarkable
building. He himself, however, never saw it, but chiefly gained his
information from the Mexicans themselves, who may have exaggerated a
little: Motecusuma's palace had twenty doors, which either opened into
the large square or into the principal streets of the city; it had three
large courts, and in one of them was a tank, supplied with water by the
aqueduct of Chapultepec. The palace contained a number of halls, and a
hundred rooms twenty-five feet long and as many broad, each provided
with a bath. Everything was built of stone and lime. The walls were
covered with beautiful stones, marble, jasper, porphyry, and a block
stone, which is so highly polished that you might use it for a
looking-glass; besides these, there was a white stone, almost
transparent. All the woodwork was made of white cedar, palm, cypress,
pine, and other fine woods, adorned with beautiful carved-work. In one
of the apartments, which was one hundred and fifty feet long and fifty
broad, was Motecusuma's chapel, which was covered with plates of gold
and silver almost the thickness of a finger, besides that it was
decorated with innumerable emeralds, rubies, topaz, and other precious
stones. (p. 235.)

CHAPTER XCII.

 _Our general takes a walk through Mexico, and views the Tlatelulco,
 (the great square,) and the chief temple of Huitzilopochtli._

We had already been four days in the city of Mexico, and neither our
commander nor any of us had, during that time, left our quarters,
excepting to visit the gardens and buildings adjoining the palace.
Cortes now, therefore, determined to view the city, and visit the great
market, and the chief temple of Huitzilopochtli: he accordingly sent
Geronimo Aguilar, Doña Marina, and one of his pages named Orteguilla,
who, by this time, understood a little of the Mexican language, to
Motecusuma, to request his permission to view the different buildings of
the city. Motecusuma, in his answer to this, certainly granted us
permission to go where we pleased, yet he was apprehensive we might
commit some outrage to one or other of his idols: he, therefore,
resolved to accompany us himself, with some of

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