cely
passable for the heaps of the dead and dying that cumbered them. Those
who took refuge in their houses and temples, found no safety in such
retreats, for they were instantly fired by the Tlascalans, and their
defenders perished miserably in the flames.

There was one scene in the midst of this desolating conflict, that was
truly sublime,--one of those strange combinations of moral and physical
grandeur, which sometimes occur in the dark annals of human warfare,
investing with a kind of hallowed interest, which the lapse of ages
serves only to soften, but never destroys, those spectacles of savage
but heroic cruelty, where every death is elevated into a martyrdom, and
the very ground saturated with human blood becomes a consecrated field,
clothed with laurels of never-fading green. It was the last act in that
bloody drama, enacted on the lofty summit of the great Teocalli, the
principal temple of Cholula, and the centre of attraction to all the
votaries of the Aztec religion, throughout the wide realms of Anahuac.
Driven from street to street, and from quarter to quarter, and falling
back, as a forlorn hope, upon the sanctuary, and the support and
encouragement of the hoary men, who presided over the mysteries of their
faith, they made a bold and desperate stand, in defence of all that was
dear and holy in their homes and their altars. Step by step, they
contested this hallowed ground, till they reached the upper terrace,
where the great temple stood. This was an area of four hundred feet
square, at an elevation of two hundred feet from the level of the
surrounding streets. On this elevated platform, the furious combatants
fought hand to hand; the priest, in his sacred garments, mingling in the
savage conflict with the humblest of his followers--the steel-clad
Castilian, the Tlascalan and the Cholulan, of every rank and grade, each
eager only to slay his man, grappled in the mortal conflict, till one or
the other fell in the death struggle, or tumbled over the side of the
mound, to be dashed in pieces below. As the half-armed, half-naked
natives melted away before the heavy and destructive weapons of the
invulnerable Spaniards, they were repeatedly offered quarter, but
scorned to accept it. One only submitted, when, pierced with countless
wounds, he could stand no longer. All the rest, to a man, fought
desperately till he fell, and many, even then, in the agonies of the
last struggle, seized their antagonists by the