had named Alvarado, from his fair hair and ruddy countenance. To-day we may still see the place where this part of the causeway lay, known as the Puente de Alvarado.
Away off the causeway into the grey dawn passed the remnant of the routed Spanish Army, wounded, bleeding, starving, their comrades gone, some to death, some to the dreadful sacrifices of the Mexican priests, where their hearts would be torn living from their breasts, and annihilation threatening all. Baggage and artillery were gone, not a carbine was left, and Cortes, seating himself upon the steps of a ruined temple on the shore, wept bitter tears of sorrow for the loss of his comrades and his vanished fortunes.
So ended the Noche Triste, and to this day may be seen an ancient tree under which it is said Cortes wept.
The Spaniards, however, were not of such stuff as easily gives in to difficulty and disaster. Had it been otherwise, Mexico to-day might have had a different destiny. It might have developed a purely aboriginal or Indian state. But fate seems not to have willed it that any such nation should exist in the New World.
Cortes and the remnant of his army—there was no other course for them—returned to their Tlascalan allies, fighting their way even here, however, for after passing the ancient pyramid of Teotihuacan, even then standing ruined and desolate a few miles north of the city—monument of the shadowy Toltecs, who preceded the Aztec hegemony, and which, restored by the Mexican Government under President Diaz, is an object of great interest to the traveller—they looked down on the Plain of Otumba, and beheld the forces of the Otomies drawn up in battle array against them. These warriors wore armour of thick quilted cotton, which formed a considerable protection against the rude weapons of the country, and the Spaniards were now without firearms. They were so numerous that, it is recorded, the plain "looked as if it were covered with snow," from the white armour.
But the Christians routed them, and thus the Battle of Otumba was one of the turning-points in New World history, as elsewhere remarked.
Reinforced by the Tlascalans, Cortes returned to the siege of the city. Fresh supplies of arms and ammunition had reached the Spaniards from the coast, with horses and two hundred Spaniards sent from Hispaniola. Cortes built a number of brigantines, which were carried by the Indians to the lake in order to attack Tenochtitlan by water as well as land. But the whole enterprise would have been hopeless had not the other Mexican tribes, hating the Aztecs, joined forces with the white men. The plan was to starve out the city on the lake by laying waste the surroundings, for it was dependent upon these for its food. To the dead Montezuma's place had succeeded his nephew Guahtemoc, a noble Aztec prince, animated by the utmost spirit of patriotism in defending the heritage of his forefathers.
"A series of severe struggles began then, both by land and water—burning, slaughter and the destruction of the lake towns. The Aztecs, with their great number, raining darts and stones upon the invaders at every engagement, attacked them with unparalleled ferocity both by forces on shore and their canoes on the lake. The Spaniards took heavy toll of the enemy at every turn, assisted by their allies the Tlascalans, as savage and implacable as the Aztecs, whom they attacked with a singular and persistent spirit of hatred, the result of long years of oppression by the dominant power of Anahuac. Cortes, on every occasion when it seemed that the last chance of success might attend it, offered terms to the Aztec capital, by no means dishonourable, assuring them their liberty and self-government in return for allegiance to the Crown of Spain and the renouncing of their abominable system of sacrificial religion. These advances were invariably met by the most implacable negatives. The Aztecs, far from offering to yield, swore they would sacrifice, when the day was theirs, every Spaniard and Tlascalan on the bloody altars of their gods; and as for entering into any treaty, the last man, woman and child would resist the hated invaders until the last drop of blood was shed and the last stone of their city thrown down. This vaunt, as regards the latter part, was almost literally carried out, and to some extent as regards the former.
"The siege operations were conducted vigorously both by land and water. Again before the eyes of the Spaniards stretched that fatal causeway—path of death amid the salt waters of Texcoco for so many of their brave comrades upon the Noche Triste of their terrible flight from Tenochtitlan. And there loomed once more that dreaded teocalli, whence the war-drum's mournful notes were heard. Guarded now by the capable and persistent Guatemoc, the city refused an offer of treaty, and invited the destruction which was to fall upon it. From the azoteas, or roofs of their buildings and temples, the undaunted Mexicans beheld the white-winged brigantines, armed with those belching engines of thunder and death whose sting they well knew: and saw the ruthless hand of devastation laying waste their fair towns of the lake shore, and cutting off their means of life.
"But the Spaniards had yet to learn to their cost the lengths of Aztec tenacity and ferocity. It will be recollected that the city was connected to the lake shores by means of four causeways, built above the surface of the water; engineering structures of stone and mortar and earth, which had from the first aroused the admiration of the Spaniards. These causeways, whilst they rendered the city almost impregnable from attack, were a source of weakness in the easy cutting-off of food supplies, which they afforded to the enemy. A simultaneous assault on all these approaches was organized by the Spaniards, under Sandoval, Alvarado and Cortes himself, respectively, whilst the brigantines, with their raking artillery, were to support the attack by water, aided by the canoes of the Tlascalan and Texcocan allies. A series of attacks was made by this method, and at last the various bodies of Spaniards advanced along the causeways and gained the city walls. But frightful disaster befel them. The comparative ease with which they entered the city aroused Cortes's suspicions; and at that moment, from the summit of the great teocalli, rang out a fearful note—the horn of Guatemoc, calling for vengeance and a concerted attack. The notes of the horn struck some ominous sense of chill in the Spaniards' breasts, and the soldier-penman, Bernal Diaz, who was fighting valiantly there, says that the noise echoed and re-echoed, and rang in his ears for days afterwards. The Spaniards, on this, as on other occasions, had foolishly neglected to secure the breaches in the causeways as they passed, or at least the rash Alvarado had not done so with his command, his earlier lesson unheeded; and when the Christians were hurled backwards—for their easy entrance into the great square of the city had been in the nature of a decoy—disaster befel them, which at one moment seemed as if it would be a repetition of that of the Noche Triste. 'The moment I reached that fearful bridge,' Cortes wrote in his dispatches, 'I saw the Spaniards returning in full flight.' Remaining to hold the breech if possible, and cover the retreat, the chivalrous Cortes almost lost his life from a furious attack by the barbarians in their canoes, and was only saved by the devotion of his own men and Indian allies, who gave their lives in his rescue. Word, nevertheless, had gone forth among the men that Cortes had fallen; and the savages, throwing before the faces of Alvarado and Sandoval the bloody heads of decapitated Spaniards, cried tauntingly the name 'Malintzin,' which was that by which Cortes was known among the Mexicans. Men and horses rolled into the lake; dead bodies filled the breaches; the Christians and their allies were beaten back, and 'as we were all wounded it was only the help of God which saved us from destruction,' wrote Bernal Diaz. Indeed, both Cortes and the Spaniards only escaped, on these and other occasions, from the Aztec's desire to take them alive for sacrifice.
"Once more, after disastrous retreats and heavy loss, the bleeding and discouraged Spaniards lay in their camp, as evening fell. Of dead, wounded and captured, the Spaniards missed more than a hundred and twenty of their comrades, and the Tlascalans a thousand, whilst valuable artillery, guns and horses were lost. But listen! what is that mournful, penetrating sound which smites the Christians' ears? It is the war-god's drum, and even from where the Spaniards stand there is visible a procession ascending the steps of the teocalli, and, to their horror, the forms of their lost comrades are seen within it: whose hearts are doomed to be torn out living from their breasts to smoke before the shrine of Huitzilopochtli, the war-devil of their enemies. From that high and fearful place their comrades' eyes must be gazing with despairing look towards the impotent Spanish camp, glazing soon in death as the obsidian knives of the priests performed their fiendish work. The disastrous situation of the Spaniards was made worse by the desertion, at this juncture, of the Tlascalan and other allies. Awed by a prophecy sent out confidently by the Aztec priests, that both Christians and allies should be delivered into their hands before eight