named Teoxihuacan,[1] in no wise inferior to the first for strength or hospitality. They now finished the ascent of the cordillera, passed through Tejotla, and for three days continued their way through the alkaline wastes skirting the ancient volcano of Nauhcampatepetl[2], exposed to chilling winds and hailstorms, which the Spaniards with their quilted armor managed to endure, but which caused to succumb many of the less protected and less hardy Cubans. The brackish water also brought sickness. On the fourth day the pass of Puerto de Leña,[3] so called from the wood piled near some temples, admitted them to the Anáhuac plateau, over seven thousand feet above the sea. With a less balmy climate and a flora less redundant than that of the Antillean stamping-ground, it offered on the other hand the attraction of being not unlike their native Spain. A smiling valley opened before them, doubly alluring to the pinched wanderers, with its broad fields of corn, dotted with houses, and displaying not far off the gleaming walls and thirteen towering temples of Xocotlan, the capital of the district. Some Portuguese soldiers declaring it the very picture of their cherished Castilblanco, this name was applied to it.[4]
Cacique Olintetl, nicknamed the temblador from the shaking of his fat body, cane forth with a suite and escorted them through the plaza to the quarters. assigned them, past pryamids of grinning human skulls, estimated by Bernal Diaz at over one hundred
- ↑ 'Hoy se nombra Ixhuacán de los Reyes.' Lorenzana, Viage.
- ↑ 'De Nauhcampa, quatre parties, et tepetl, montagne.' Humboldt, Vues, ii. 191. Equivalent to the Spanish name of Cofre de Perote.
- ↑ Lorenzana believes it to be the later Sierra de la Agua. A map with profile of the route is given in Carbajal Espinosa, Hist. Mex., ii. 201; and a still better map by Orozco y Berra, Itinerario, in Noticias Mex., 233.
- ↑ The name must not be confounded with Zacatlan, as Ixtlilxochitl calls it, for this lies north of Tlascala. 'Este valle y poblacion se llama Caltanmi.' 'Tenia las mayores y mas bien labradas casas que hasta entonces .... habiamos visto.' Cortés, Cartas 58. Lorenzana says, 'the present Tlatlanquitepec,' in the lower lying portion of which stood the palace of Caltanni, 'house below;' and there stands the big tree to which the natives say that Cortés tied his horse. Viage, p. iii.-iv. 'Llamase....Zaclotan aquel lugar, y el valle Zacatami.' Gomara, Hist. Mex., 68; Oviedo, iii. 260. Cocotlan. Bernal Diaz, Hist. Verdad., 41.
