f
fortification, Tizoc explained: "These are the barriers set up against
the Tlahuicos, who, heeding not the order given of old by our lord
Chaltzantzin, have striven many times to break forth from the
valley--for among these men there are many of perverse natures and evil
minds."

In _tlahuico_ I recognized a Nahua word that means "men turned towards
the earth," but what its meaning might be in the sense in which Tizoc
employed it I did not know. I should have asked for further
explanation--for the manner of this man was so frank and so friendly
that it invited a cordial familiarity--but as I was about to speak we
passed through the narrow opening in a wall of unusual height and
strength, and so came into a charming garden, in the midst of which
stood a large house well built of stone. For the making of this garden a
natural nook on the side of the mountain had been enlarged by filling in
along its outer edge against a great retaining-wall, built up from a
depth of a hundred feet from the slope below; and on the farther side of
the plateau thus created, where the path down into the valley went on
again, were heavy defensive walls. Near this exit, also, was a long low
building that I took to be a guard-house.

The crowd that had followed behind us from the height above went on
across the plateau, and out through the gate beside the guard-house--its
members casting many curious looks at us as they departed--and the
guardsmen who had formed our escort, at an order from Tizoc, went on to
their quarters. But Tizoc led us across the garden to the large house
that stood in the midst of it, and there, with a formal courtesy, bade
us enter. This was his home, he said, and we were his welcome guests.

The house was so like the houses ordinarily found in Mexico that we had
no feeling of strangeness in entering it. It was built of stone neatly
laid in cement; was but a single story in height, and enclosed a large
central court, in the midst of which a fountain sparkled, surrounded by
small trees and shrubs and beds of flowers. All of the rooms opened upon
this central court, and in the outer wall the only opening was the
narrow way by which we had entered--for the prompt closing of which
there lay in readiness a pile of metal bars. The flat roof, also of
stone, was reached by a stone stair-way from the court, and had about it
a heavy stone parapet that was pierced with narrow slits through which
javelins and arrows could be dis