white cakes, of eggs and other
ingredients, which they presented on plates covered with napkins to
Montezuma; and then another kind of bread was brought to him in long
loaves, as likewise plates of a kind of cakes resembling wafers or
pancakes. When Montezuma had concluded his meal, all his guards and
domestics sat down to dinner, and as well as I could judge, above a
thousand dishes of the various eatables already mentioned were served up
to them, with immense quantities of fruit, and numerous vessels of foaming
chocolate. His establishment, including his women and inferior servants of
all kinds, was amazingly numerous, and must have occasioned prodigious
expence, yet the most perfect regularity was preserved amid that vast
profusion. The steward of his household, or major-domo, was at this time a
prince named _Tapiea_, who kept an account of all the royal rents in a set
of books or symbolical representations which occupied an entire house.

Connected with the palace of Montezuma there were two large buildings
filled with every kind of arms, both offensive and defensive, some of
which were richly ornamented with gold and jewels; such as large and small
shields, some of the latter being so contrived as to roll up in a small
compass, and to let fall in action so as to cover the whole body; much
defensive armour of quilted cotton, ornamented with various devices in
feather work; helmets or casques for the head made of wood and bone,
adorned with plumes of feathers; immense quantities of bows, arrows, darts,
and slings; lances having stone heads or blades six feet long, so strong
as not to break when fixed in a shield, and as sharp as razors; clubs or
two-handed swords, having edges of sharp stones; and many other articles
which I cannot enumerate. In the palace there was a magnificent aviary,
containing every kind of bird to be found in all the surrounding country,
from large eagles down to the smallest paroquets of beautiful plumage. In
this place the ornamental feather-work so much in repute among the
Mexicans, was fabricated, the feathers for this purpose being taken from
certain birds called _Quetzales_, and others, having green, red, white,
yellow, and blue feathers, about the size of our Spanish pyes, the name of
which I have forgot. There were also great numbers of parrots, and geese
of fine plumage; all these birds breeding in the royal aviary, and being
annually stripped of their feathers at the proper season, to s