r that they might not make any mistakes in
recognizing their numberless wives! None but Spanish heroes of a "holy
war" ever exhibited such a picture of total depravity.

When the Aztecs were thus roused to action by the brutal lust of
Cortez, they assailed him with phrensy rather than with courage, until
his quarters in the city became untenable, and then this night retreat
was undertaken, in which all the gold, if there really was any, and all
other treasures, and two sons and one daughter of Montezuma, were lost
in the confused rush of such a multitude over this foot-path. The
Indian story is that Cortez slew the children of Montezuma when he
found himself unable to carry them off. Perhaps he did, but the
probability is that they perished by chance, or, rather, it seems to
have been by chance that Cortez or any of his gang escaped and came
safe to Tacuba.

We must now give up history to talk of things by the road-side.

The "hard water" from the springs on the south side of Chapultepec is
carried over stone arches upon the causeway of Tacubaya to the gate of
Belin. But at Santa Fe, several leagues distant from the city, is a
stream of soft water, which is brought to the powder-mill (_Molina
del Rey_), where it turns a wheel. Thence the aqueduct, passing by
the north side of Chapultepec, is carried along the highway to the
causeway of San Cosmo. It passes the gate of San Cosmo, enters the
city, and terminates in the street of Tacuba. By these two gates, and
by the side of these two parallel aqueducts, the American army entered
the city of Mexico.

The objects of interest by the road-side, after I had passed the city
gate, were, first, the French Academy, which is well worthy of a visit
for its pretty grounds, if nothing more. When we had got farther on,
the land rose a little above the water-level of the swamp. Here a
branch-road and the aqueduct turned off to Chapultepec, and in the
angle thus formed by the two roads is the English burying-ground or
cemetery. In this resting-place of the dead there is not a spot that
can not be irrigated at all seasons of the year, while the art of man
has been busy in improving the advantages that nature has so lavishly
bestowed.

Just before my first arrival in Mexico, public attention had been
particularly directed to this quiet spot, from its having been chosen
as the place for depositing the ashes of the last President of Mexico,
at whose burial no holy water had been waste