Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 1.djvu/86

sive disorders, the consequences of famine and improper food. There was no water; the ground had been torn up and the roots gnawed. The very trees were stripped of their bark; yet, notwithstanding they usually devoured their prisoners, no instance occurred when, amidst all the famine and starvation of this siege, they preyed upon each other.^[1] The remnant of the population went, at the request of the conquered Guatemozin, to the neighboring villages, until the town could be purified and the dead removed."

1. This fact, as stated by Bernal Diaz, is doubted by some other writers, and seems, unfortunately, not fully sustained by authority.