Identifier: mexicoitsancient01enoc (find matches)
Title: Mexico, its ancient and modern civilisation, history and political conditions, topography and natural resources, industries and general development;
Year: 1910 (1910s)
Authors: Enock, C. Reginald (Charles Reginald), 1868-1970
Subjects:
Publisher: New York, Scribner
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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y was the Mecca of Anahuac, and wasveritably a land flowing with milk and honey. Well-built houses, numerous teocallis, or pyramidal temples,well-dressed people with embroidered cloaks, and num-bers of censer-swinging priests formed the ensemblewhich greeted the Spaniards eyes, whilst the intensecultivation of the ground and the fields of maguey, maiz,and other products, irrigated by canals from the mountainstreams, formed the environment of this advanced com-munity. Not a palms-breadth of land that is notcultivated, wrote Cortes in his despatches to Castile,and the city, as we approached, was more beautifulthan the cities of Spain. Beautiful and gay doubtlessCholula was when the Spaniards entered ; drenched withthe blood of its inhabitants and devastated by fire it laybefore they left it! There had been signs of treachery,even on the road thither, work of the Cholulans; but,lodged in the city, the Spaniards discovered, through theagency of the intelligent Marina, a plot to annihilate
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(K o M ><< < ^ H J w •a: W « I H CORTES AND THE CONQUEST 75 them later. Taking the Cholulans unawares as theycrowded the streets with—at the moment—harmlesscuriosity, the Spaniards, with cannon, musket, and sabre,mowed down the unfortunate and unprotected natives inone bloody massacre, aided by the ferocious Tlascalans,who fell upon the Cholulans from the rear. The appall-ing and unnecessary slaughter at Cholula has calleddown upon the heads of Cortes and the Spaniards theexecration of historians. Some have endeavoured toexcuse or palliate it, but it remains as one of the indeliblestains of the Spanish Conquistadores upon the historythey were making. Having accomplished this punitive act, an image of the Virgin was set up on the summit ofthe great pyramidal temple, and some order restored.They are now your Highnesss faithful vassals, wroteCortes to the king of Spain ! After this the way seemed clear. Far on the horizonloomed the white, snow-capped cones of Popocatep

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