glimpse is caught of the city and valley
of Mexico. No description can convey to the reader any adequate
idea of the effect upon one who, for the first time, beholds that
magnificent prospect. With what feelings must Cortez have regarded
it when he first saw it from the top of the mountain between the
snow-covered volcanoes of Pococatapetl and Iztaccihuatl, a short
distance to the left of where the road now runs! The valley was not
then, as it is now, for the greater part a barren waste, but was
studded all over with the homes of men, containing more than forty
cities, besides towns and villages without number. Never has such a
vision burst upon the eyes of mortal man since that upon which the
seer of old looked down from Pisgah."]

Montezuma was continually vacillating as to the course to be pursued.
At one hour he would resolve to marshal his armies, and fall, if fall
he must, gloriously, amid the ruins of his empire. The next hour
timidity would be in the ascendant, and a new embassy would be sent
to Cortez, with courteous speeches and costly gifts. The unhappy
monarch, in his despair, had gone to one of the most sacred of the
sanctuaries of the empire to mourn and to pray. Here he passed eight
days in the performance of all the humiliating and penitential rites
of his religion. But each day Cortez drew nearer, and the crowds
accumulating around him increased.

The spirit of Montezuma was now so crushed that he sent an embassy to
Cortez offering him four loads of gold for himself, and one for each
of his captains, and he also promised to pay a yearly tribute to
the King of Spain, if the dreaded conqueror would turn back. This
messenger met the Spanish army upon the heights of Ithualco, as they
were gazing with admiration upon the goodly land spread out before
them. Cortez listened with much secret satisfaction to this messenger,
as an indication of the weakness and the fear of the great monarch.
Returning the laconic answer, "I must see Montezuma, and deliver to
him personally the message of the emperor my master," he more eagerly
pressed on his way.

Montezuma received this response as the doom decreed to him by fate.
"Of what avail," the unhappy monarch is reported to have said, "is
resistance, when the gods have declared themselves against us? Yet I
mourn most for the old and infirm, the women and children, too feeble
to fight or to fly. For myself and the brave men around me, we must
bare our breasts to the