pest-holes, and to seek the fields adjacent, now lustrous green under refreshing rains. Ah! it was pitiful, life to them now, this world a great charnel-house filled with the bones of their loved ones, and their hearts dead though still bleeding. What were their sins more than those of others, that they should be so stricken, that they should be so ground to the dust while the conquerors flushed with victory were exulting before God because he had so ordered and accomplished? They had sacrificed human beings on the altars of their gods, sixty thousand in one year, some said. But what were these butcheries of the Spaniards but human sacrifices, of more than six times sixty thousand in one year! Behold them as they file along the causeway, the very sun striking black and stifling on their famine-stricken forms and agonized faces. On them, then, ye conquerors! Complete your work; for in its swift continuance is their earliest rest![1]
The 14th of August the troops entered the surrendered quarters to review their work and its results. "I swear," writes Bernal Diaz, "that the lake and houses and abodes were so full of bodies and heads of dead men that I am unable to convey an idea thereof; for in the streets and courts of Tlatelulco there were no other things, and we could walk only amidst dead bodies.[2] Many became sick from the stench, and Cortés ordered fires to be lighted to purify the air. Natives were sent to bring forth the dead, and with them went Spaniards seeking for gold, silver, precious
- ↑ 'Hiço herrar algunos Hombres, y Mugeres por Esclavos; à todos los demàs dexò en libertad.' Torquemada, 573. A muchos indios é indias, porque estaban dados por traydores,' says Oviedo, iii. 517. Cortés stayed and punished those who took slaves, 'aunque todavia herraron en la cara á algunos mancebos y mugeres.' So states the native record of Sahagun, Hist. Cong. (ed. 1840), 231. But if he punished slave-takers it was for not declaring the capture to the royal official. Duran reduces his account of Spanish liberality to an absurdity, but more from politic reasons than because he had not at hand better evidence, Hist. Ind., MS., ii. 510.
- ↑ Hist. Verdad, 156. 'Io sospetto, che da' Messicani lasciati fossero a bella posta insepolti i cadaveri, per iscacciar colla puzza gli Assediatori.' Clavigero, Storia Mess., iii. 231. But this is unlikely. A severe siege will produce such results.
