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Chap. 18.]
Spaniards corapared it to Valladolid for its beauty and magnificence.It was a great emporium of merchandise. Strangers f’rom distant parts ofthe continent flocked to it. Solis says, the streets were wide and well laidout; the buildings larger and of better architeeture than those of Tlascala,and the inhabitants were principally merchants and mechanics. Cortezhimsell’, after entering this city, thus speaks of it in a letter to Charles V .“The inhabitants are better clothed than any we have hitherto seen. Peo-ple in easy circurnstances wear cloaks above their dress; these cloaksdiffer from those of Africa , for they have pockets, thongh the cut, clothand fringes are the same. The environs of the city are very fertile andwell cultivated. Almost all the fields may he ivatered; and the city ismuch more beautiful than all those in Spain ; for it is well fortified, andbuilt on level ground. I can assure your highness, that from the top of amosque (temple) I reckoned more thanfour hundred towers, all of mosques.The number of inhabitants is so great that there is not an inch of grounduncultivated.” When the Spaniards reached Tezcuco, they found it aslarge again as Seville . It rivalled in grandeur and extent Mexico itself,and was of a much more ancient date than that Capital. Herrera says,the streets were very regulär, and that fresh water was hrought in pipesfrom the mountains to every house. The principal front of the buildingsextended on the borders of a spacious lake, where the causeway that leato Mexico began. It was from this causeway, which was built of stoneand lime, that the Spaniards first beheld the distant Capital, with its towersand pinnacles in the midst of the lake; and on the 8th November, 1519,Cortez and his myrmidons entered that city, which then contained a great-er population than New-York does at present; for it had between threeand four hundred thousand inhabitants.
When the Spaniards entered the gates, through a bulwark of stonesupported by castles, they beheld a spacious Street with houses uniformlybuilt, and the Windows and battlements filled with spectators. Theywere received into one of Motezuma’s houses, which had been built byhis father. This building, Solis remarks, vied in extent, with the principalpalaces of emperors in Europe ; and had the appearanee of a fortress,with thick stone walls and towers upon the flanks. The streets of the citywere straight, as if drawn by a line ; and the public buildings, and housesof the nobility, which made up the greatest part of the city, Were of stoneand well built. The palace of Motezuma was so large a pile that itopened with thirty gates into as many different streets. The prineipalfront took up one entire side of a spacious parade, and was of black, redand white jasper, well polished. Over the gates were the arms or sym-bolical figures of Motezuma or his predecessors, viz. a griffin, being halfan eagle and half a lion ; the wings extended and holding a tiger in itstalons. The roofs of the buildings were of cypress, cedar, and otherodoriferous woods, and were ornamented with carvings of “ differentfoliages and relievos.” But without referring to the splendor of this un-fortunate monarch’s eourt, his luxurious mode of living, his treasures, thechair of burnished gold in which he was carried to meet Cortez, the jew-eis of gold, pearls, and precious stones, that adorned his person and thoseof his attendants, and the “ shoes of hammered gold,” that were bound tohisfeet and legs with Straps, like the Roman military sandals ; it will besufficient to notice the market of the city for the sale of merchandise, inOrder to realize a tolerably correct idea of the state of the arts among theMexicans. Nothing excited the siirprise of the Spaniards so much asthis market—both as regarded. the quantity, variety, and quality of thegoods sold, and the Order which prevailed.
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