At the exit of the said valley, I found a great wall of dry stones, about nine feet high, which crossed the whole valley from one mountain to the other;
The Wall of
Tlascala
it was twenty feet thick, and had a stone parapet, a foot and a half broad on the top so that one could fight from above. The single entrance was about ten paces broad, and in this entrance one wall doubled over the other, in the form of a ravelin, narrowly contracted within about forty paces, in such wise that the entrance was curved instead of being straight.[1] Having inquired the object of that wall they told me that it was built because they were on the frontier of that province of Tascalteca, whose people were Montezuma's enemies, and constantly at war with him.
The natives of this valley besought me, that, inasmuch as I was going to see Montezuma their lord, not to pass through the country of these his enemies, who perchance might be ill-disposed towards me, and do me some mischief, whereas they would guide me always through the land of the said Montezuma without going out of it, and that in it I would always be well received. The Cempoalans, however, advised me not to do this, but to go through Tascalteca, for what these people were telling me, was for the purpose of cutting me off from the amity of that province; they told me that all Montezuma's people were bad and treacherous, and would ensnare me in places whence I could never escape. As I had more confidence in the Cempoalans than in the
- ↑ Bernal Diaz contradicts Cortes's statement that this wall was built of dry stones, and states that the stones were so firmly united by such strong bitumen that it required pick axes to separate them. Clavigero, in his notice on the remains of military architecture in Mexico (lib. vii. Sec. xxvi.), gives faith to Bernal Diaz who professed to have carefully studied the construction, though he brusquely characterises the old soldier as an idiot (sic) for not distinguishing between bitumen and the mortar used by the Mexicans. Lest the ingenious construction of the aperture be not clearly enough explained by Cortes, the accompanying drawing will show its character.
