rd on the walls in the place of their husbands, while one was
said actually to have donned mail at a time of disaster and rallied the
retreating troops against the enemy. It cannot be said, however, that
even these gallant dames showed a higher spirit than did the native
women during the same time of battle. The Aztecs were suffering from
many evils during the conflict when the Spaniards strove, for long in
vain, to take from them their beautiful city. The plague of small-pox
was abroad, brought to the Aztecs by a dying negro in the train of
Cortes; and that unknown negro proved the most terrible foe of the Aztec
nation. Yet, even though they were now dying by hundreds in the streets,
while their thinning ranks were being swept by the fire-speaking tubes
that weaponed the army of their foes, they fought fiercely on, and their
women gave them noble aid and incitement. They stood by the side of the
warrior in battle, strung his bow, filled his quiver, gave him fresh
stones for his sling; they nursed the sick through all the horrors of
the loathsome disease which had fastened upon them; and they did yet
more, for they kept their hearts high with hope and determination when
even the noblest warriors failed of these things, and so they upheld the
hands of Guatemozin, their beloved but most unhappy chief, and upbore
the standard of their country to the very end. It was all in vain; the
Mexico of that civilization was doomed; but none the less did the women
of that day, both pagan and Christian, display qualities which in the
fusion of the races in after years should have borne noble fruit.

It is not the purpose of this work to trace the history of any country,
save at the points where such history touches the universal story of
woman; and so there exists no obligation to present to the reader even
the most fragmentary sketch of the progress of Mexico from the rule of
the barbarism of the Aztecs to that of the civilization of the
Spaniards. The latter brought with them their own feminine culture, and
for long held it apart from the conditions existing among the indigenous
inhabitants of the land. Among the women of Spain who took up their
abode in Mexico there are names which lend themselves to story; but
their histories touched Mexico only as a scenic background, and,
moreover, it would be an unfruitful digression to attempt to find any
feminine history in the days of Spain's first occupation of Anahuac. The
vice-roys held th