THE ROMANCE OF MEXICO
upon their foreheads, he ordained "Henceforth bear ye not the name of Azteca, but Mexica." Fierce and warlike, the Aztecs soon became a power in the land, for, keeping many of their own blood-thirsty customs, they acquired most of the arts and crafts of the Toltecs.
The Tezcucans, a gentler tribe, had entered meanwhile still more fully into the heritage of skill and knowledge left behind by the old inhabitants. But suddenly in 1418 a terrible disaster befell them. The savage chief of the neighbouring Tepanecs swooped down on their provinces, slew their monarch, and reigned supreme and merciless in beautiful Tezcuco.
The history of these times is told by a Tezcucan chronicler, who wrote soon after the Spanish Conquest. He wrote in Castilian, that the insolent white men might read of the vanished glories of the dark race, whose empire they had trampled into dust with remorseless iron heel.
Romantic are the stories he tells of the adventures of Nezahualcoyotl, the heir to the Tezcucan crown, who was forced to wander, like Alfred of England, a fugitive and outcast in the mountains and forests. The young prince was pursued for many years by the vindictive hate of the Tepanec usurper, who promised to whoever should capture him, dead or alive, broad lands and the hand of a noble lady. But no Tezcucan was base enough to betray his prince. One day the fugitive just turned the crest of a hill as his pursuers climbed it on the other side. Breathless and driven, in all the wide country no hiding-place could he see. Fields of chian lay around him, and a solitary maiden
