A kindlier heart, however, exists not on earth; and to him and to his Mexican wife, I am indebted for many a pleasant hour, beguiled by the exquisite music of the one, and the story of wild adventure of the other.
TEZCOCO.
8th October. We rose early. Every symptom of yesterday's storm was swept from the sky—a clear and beautiful day, mild as our June.
After breakfast we sallied forth to make arrangements for our journey to Teotihuacan, but found that the person who was to furnish us with horses had gone on a bull-catching expedition to a neighboring hacienda. Finding it, therefore, impossible to make any excursions to the neighbor, hood to-day, we amused ourselves by strolling over the town and seeing all that is interesting in the way of antiquarian research.
At the period of the conquest, Tezcoco was the second city of the Mexican Empire; and what it must have been in splendor and vastness, may be judged from the account I have heretofore given of the Capital itself. Situated, then, on the borders of the lake, (the spot from which Cortez launched his brigantines when he invested Mexico by water,) it perhaps resembled Pisa both in power and importance; but every trace of its former magnificence has disappeared, and it has dwindled to scarcely more than a respectable village, where a few herdsmen, fisher, men, and farmers have gathered together for mutual protection and traffic. The large Plaza is silent and deserted—the people loll about their shops and houses as on a holyday—a universal quietude rests over the whole town—and a general listlessness seems to prevail both in regard to the present and the future.[1]
I was particularly struck with one bad feature in the character of the Tezcocans—a disregard for their dead. In passing through the western portion of the town we came to the parish church, which was being repaired. On entering the square in front of it, I stumbled against a human skull; a little farther on, I found the niches in the walls filled with them;—the floor of the edifice was taken up, and the dead-pits had been cleaned and scraped, yet the remains of the human frame were still plenteously scattered over the bottom, and the stench was intolerable. The whole surface of the yard was strewn with ribs and thigh bones—lower jaws—teeth—and fragments of skulls, and a huge pile of rich, black mould, mottled with human bones, teas thrown in a corner—the contents of the pits within.
- ↑ When Cortéz entered the city of Tezcoco, on the last day of the year 1530, the nobles came out to meet him. and conducted him to one of the Palaces of the late King Nezahualtcojotl, which was large enough according to the Conqueror, "to contain not only the six hundred Spaniards who were lodged in it, but also many more."— Clavigero, Book x., vol. 2, p. 133.
