and extended for some distance beyond it. Wooden crosses with strips of red cloth attached guarded the fields. They were there to ward off eclipses and spirits that might cause these crops to fail. After a day of difficult travel, they approached the village of Socochima. This was once a fortified hamlet of exceptional beauty, its old stone fortress hovering on a precipice towering above a magnificent cataract. Here they found many vines of the granadilla, the fruit of the passion flower, and an abundance of good food, and so they spent an additional day.
At Socochima the children for the first time donned their papahigos, a half-mask covering the face, while Catalina began to wear Pedro’s gaban, a greatcoat with a hood. Here the family also obtained cloaks and caps of a material unknown to them. The caps, similar to the montera of Central Spain, caused them untold misery with itchy scalps. However, Pedro felt that the caps, which he insisted his family wear on the trail, were essential to ward off the chill and to hide the crimson locks of their owners and make them less conspicuous targets.
As Pedro tucked an errant lock within Lucia’s cap, it may have occurred to him how out of place these children were in this primitive environment. This was especially true of Lucia who, with her red hair, small, freckled face, and hazel eyes, appeared doll-like on top of her enormous mule. How odd it was that she would be transplanted here. What Lucia remembered about this moment, as her father swept back her hair, was how she had briefly seen herself reflected in her father’s eyes and how she had never before noticed that his red hair was becoming gray. As she clutched the lead rope of her mule and moved out to catch the others, her father hoped he had made the right decisions regarding his family’s future.
Beyond Socochima the party crossed a pass over some high mountains and moved through another village called Texutla. Here, the forest of large oak trees and an extensive stand of pine, reached toward the summit of the Cordillera of the Andes, the colossal range that loomed before them. After leaving Texutla, they completed their ascent of the mountains.
The party awoke the next morning to find their heads ringed with a coating of frost. However, when the sun broke through the trees at 8,000 feet above sea level, it warmed them somewhat and helped to make them feel better. They left the area early and entered another pass where they found a very small group of houses amid the ruins of what had been a stone temple. Again, they found it very difficult to find food and the cold in the shadowed depths of this mountain pass was severe.
Beyond the pass they came to the territory of Zautla or Xocotlan. Here they found an Indian village that had been renamed Castilblanco (White Castle) by some of the Portuguese soldiers with Cortes. These men said that Castilblanco’s flat-roofed homes and white-painted idol-houses reminded them of a town of that name in Portugal. The train was able to obtain food here, though it was sparse and barely enough to feed the party.
After leaving Castilblanco, they entered the province of the once-proud Tlascala. These were the Indians about whom Diego and Lucia had heard their grandfather speak. A number of these Indians, Aztec and Tlascalan chiefs among them, had been presented to Emperor Charles at Toledo in 1528, a spectacle which their maternal grandfather had witnessed. These were also the Indians who had been so devastated by the scourge of the matlalzahuatl. The party became aware they had crossed into the territory of the Tlascala when they found a stone wall, half again higher than a man, which Tlascala’s neighbors, like Hadrian, had built to protect them from raids by an unwanted people. Here, as Cortes had done before them, they followed the Apulco River through a steep canyon and continued on.
In the province of the Tlascala, the home of perhaps 50 vecinos and an Indian population that had once exceeded 200,000, the Robledos found the Andes spread before them like a vast tableland. The plateau they encountered maintained an elevation of more than 6,000 feet for a distance of nearly 600 miles. The vecinos had been warned in 1552 that they could not form estates here to the detriment of the Indians, but now with the Indian population much depleted, small groups of Spaniards had begun to move into the area. The party found it very difficult to obtain food and so went to sleep without any. The Robledo party had been on the trail for eight days and everyone was cold, tired and hungry.
Across the Cordillera of the Andes, a ragged procession of mountains stretched in a westerly direction as far as the eye could see. Of tremendous height, some of these peaks formed the highest land areas on earth. Here the Robledo party found a massive stone jaguar, like one of the mighty stone bulls of Guisando, carved in volcanic rock and pointing toward the glacier-clad Pico de Orizaba (or Citlaltepetl as the Aztecs called it—‘the mountain of the stars’). This extinct volcanic cone, which rose 18,855 feet above sea level, was the highest peak in New Spain and the third highest peak in North America. Its crown, and many of the other peaks that spread to the west, was in an area of perpetual snow. The air was exceedingly dry and the soil, although naturally good, was not clothed with the luxuriant vegetation of the lower regions. The land had a parched appearance owing partly to the greater evaporation that took place on these lofty plains. The Robledos followed a path upward across a dry, forlorn stretch of rock and thorn forest, but the tableland, when they reached it, was thickly covered with larch, oak, cypress, and other trees, some of extraordinary dimensions.
Days later, in Tlascala, on 15 October, the Robledos came to the little town of Xalacingo. About six miles from there, they came to the ruins of what had been a very strong fortress. This fortress had been built of stone and cement, so hard that Cortes had found it very difficult to demolish it, even with iron pickaxes. It had been built to defend the towns of the Tlascala from their mortal enemies, the Indians of Mexico. Although this fortress was now in ruins, and was not defended as it once had been by Indians with swords, shields, and lances, the site itself still concerned the Robledos. They were certain that if a party of Indians lay concealed and waiting in ambush, it would be at a site such as this. However, the Indian population had been decimated, the dead lying unburied in their huts, fields and roads for months. No Indians appeared and the Robledo party continued its slow march through what they considered potentially hostile territory.
As evening approached, the heavens were an infinite ceiling of light, the trees seemingly blazing with the sun’s last rays. Bats and birds swirled in the evening sky, and the members of the mule train slept with the low moan of wind rushing through the mountaintops. Because the wind masked most sounds, they slept with sentries posted and tried to keep their ears tuned to anything that might foretell disaster. The wind moaned ominously through the night but ceased at dawn, and with the light of day became calm and placid.
Still in the province of the Tlascala, the Robledo party finally began to see signs of human life. They saw people in their huts and in their fields of maize and maguey, the plant from which the Indians made their pulque (a fermented drink). The country was beautiful with a soft breeze blowing through the branches of the trees and here and there a little brook from which they could obtain drinking water. The party went through a small village and on 25 October slept by a stream with a double stand of sentries posted. They remained certain that the Tlascaltec would steal their cargo and kill them if they were able. It was on the bank of this stream, at the edge of this possibly hostile Indian village that the Robledos ate dog for the first time.
Unable to find food, except for green plums that they ate with a relish, the party for the third day had little to eat beyond the maize they carried. If they were to maintain their strength for their daily march of 15 miles, they had to have food. The two small dogs that wandered into their camp that evening seemed to present themselves as potential nourishment. Although the Robledos initially refused to eat the dogs that Juan’s men roasted on a spit, hunger eventually triumphed over cultural barriers. The small dogs proved to be a fine meal.
As they sat around their campfire that evening, Juan de Penol described to his men and to the Robledos, the practice the Tlascaltec had once engaged in of eating the people they captured. “This,” he said, “you may find hard to believe, but only 50 years ago, these people kept men and boys in cages to fatten them for the slaughter. Boys like you, Diego,” he said, pointing to the six-year-old who moved closer to his father for comfort. “Most of those who were sacrificed were captives, but sometimes they sacrificed their own people, hundreds of them on some occasions, depending on what they were asking from the gods. Their cues,” he continued, “their idol-houses were smeared with the blood of those they killed and their priests were filthy