THE ROMANCE OF MEXICO
were captured by the enemy; others, again, searching for cherries, strayed from the ranks and met with the same evil fate. A few of the Spaniards who had actually carried treasure safely through la Noche Triste were now compelled to fling it away.
"The devil take your gold," said Cortés to one of these men, "if it is to cost you your life!" The general, though wounded, shared the scanty fare of his men, and was ever at hand to cheer on the weak and fainting. "There was no people," says an old chronicler, "so capable of supporting hunger as the Spaniards, and none were ever more severely tried than the soldiers of Cortés." He might have added that the Tlascalans showed equal courage and endurance.
On the sixth day of the march the Indians on the hill-sides shouted in triumph, "Hasten on! You will soon find yourselves where you cannot escape!" Too soon did the Spaniards learn the meaning of the grim words.
They had taken the longer route to Tlascala skirting the northern lakes, and they came now in view of the ever silent Micoatl, the "Pathway of the Dead." Here stood the giant pyramids built by that mysterious people who dwelt in the land of Anahuac long ages before the Aztecs left their ancient home in the north. Here, too, lay a buried city, Tiotihuacan, the "Habitation of the Gods." The Aztecs declared that the largest pyramid was sacred to the sun, the lesser to the moon, while the smaller mounds had been dedicated to the stars.
