CORTES 'BURNS HIS BOATS'
Here fields of maize and acres of the tall-stemmed aloe, crowned with its dark leaves and yellow flowers, gladdened their eyes. What the palm is to the Old World the aloe is to the New. From the pulp of the leaves the Mexicans made paper; from the fibres cord and cloth; the thorns were natural pins and needles. The whole leaf thatched their houses. The root was eaten as a vegetable, and from the sap they made an excellent wine.
A few hours' march through this cultivated region brought the army to the outskirts of a large town. Without the walls was a ghastly monument composed of the skulls of human beings. Bernal Diaz, who counted them, declares that there were a hundred thousand! Thirteen temples, each with its chamber of sacrifice, dominated the city.
Tired and hungry after their difficult journey across the mountains, the Spaniards were much disheartened when the cacique of the place received them with cold, inhospitable reserve. When asked if he were subject to Montezuma, he replied haughtily, "Who is there that is not a vassal to Montezuma?" He then spoke in vaunting terms of the greatness and power of his emperor, and of his impregnable capital, which stood in a lake in the centre of a wide valley. It was connected with the land by causeways with drawbridges, and was guarded day and night by war-canoes. "The words which we heard," boasts old Diaz, "however they may have filled us with wonder, made us—such is the temper of the Spaniard—only the more earnest to prove the adventure, desperate as it might appear."
