One night we camped in a rest house, of which there were many built
along the roads for the use of travellers, that was placed almost on
the top of the sierra or mountain range which surrounds the valley of
Tenoctitlan. Next morning we took the road again before dawn, for the
cold was so sharp at this great height that we, who had travelled from
the hot land, could sleep very little, and also Guatemoc desired if it
were possible to reach the city that night.

When we had gone a few hundred paces the path came to the crest of the
mountain range, and I halted suddenly in wonder and admiration. Below
me lay a vast bowl of land and water, of which, however, I could see
nothing, for the shadows of the night still filled it. But before me,
piercing the very clouds, towered the crests of two snow-clad mountains,
and on these the light of the unrisen sun played, already changing their
whiteness to the stain of blood. Popo, or the Hill that Smokes, is the
name of the one, and Ixtac, or the Sleeping Woman, that of the other,
and no grander sight was ever offered to the eyes of man than they
furnished in that hour before the dawn. From the lofty summit of Popo
went up great columns of smoke which, what with the fire in their heart
and the crimson of the sunrise, looked like rolling pillars of
flame. And for the glory of the glittering slopes below, that changed
continually from the mystery of white to dull red, from red to crimson,
and from crimson to every dazzling hue that the rainbow holds, who can
tell it, who can even imagine it? None, indeed, except those that have
seen the sun rise over the volcans of Tenoctitlan.

When I had feasted my eyes on Popo I turned to Ixtac. She is not so
lofty as her 'husband,' for so the Aztecs name the volcan Popo, and when
first I looked I could see nothing but the gigantic shape of a woman
fashioned in snow, and lying like a corpse upon her lofty bier, whose
hair streamed down the mountain side. But now the sunbeams caught her
also, and she seemed to start out in majesty from a veil of rosy mist,
a wonderful and thrilling sight. But beautiful as she was then, still I
love the Sleeping Woman best at eve. Then she lies a shape of glory on
the blackness beneath, and is slowly swallowed up into the solemn night
as the dark draws its veil across her.

Now as I gazed the light began to creep down the sides of the volcans,
revealing the forests on their flanks. But still the vast valley was
fi