—Un esforcado soldado, que se dezia Lerma—Se fue entre los Indioscomo aburrido de temor del mismo Cortes, a quien avia ayudado a salvarla vida, por ciertas cosas de enojo que Cortes contra èl tuvo, queaqui no declaro por su honor: nunca mas supimos del vivo, ni muerto,mala suspecha tuvimos.
Bernal Diaz Del Castillo—Hist. Verd de la Conquista.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XVI.
CHAPTER XVII.
CHAPTER XVIII.
CHAPTER XIX.
CHAPTER XX.
CHAPTER XXI.
The traveller, who wanders at the present day along the northern andeastern borders of the Lake of Tezcuco, searches in vain for thosemonuments of aboriginal grandeur, which surrounded it in the age ofMontezuma. The lake itself, which not so much from the saltness of itsflood as from the vastness of its expanse, was called by Cortes the Seaof Anahuac, is no longer worthy of the name. The labours of that unhappyrace of men, whose bondage the famous Conquistador cemented in the bloodof their forefathers, have conducted, through the bowels of a mountain,the waters of its great tributaries, the pools of San Cristobal andZumpango; and these, rushing down the channel of the Tula, or river ofMontezuma, and mingled with the surges of the great Gulf, support fleetsof modern argosies, instead of piraguas and chinampas, and expend uponfoundering ships-of-war the wrath, which, in their ancient beds, waswasted upon reeds and bulrushes. With the waters, which rippled throughtheir streets, have vanished the numberless towns and cities, that once