If you look at the arms of the Mexican Republic, on a passport or a silver dollar, you will see a representation of a rock surrounded by water.  On the rock grows a cactus, and on the cactus sits an eagle with a serpent in his beak.  The story is that the wandering tribe preserved a tradition of an oracle which said that when they should find an eagle, holding a serpent, and perched on a cactus growing out of a rock, then they should cease their wanderings.  On an island in the lake of Tezcuco, they found eagle, serpent, cactus, and rock, as described, and they settled there in due course.  What fragment of truth is hidden in this myth it is hard to say.  Tenochtitlan means “The Stone-cactus place;” and the Aztec picture-writings express its name by a hieroglyph of a prickly pear growing on a rock.  Putting this history out of the question, the Aztecs had excellent reasons for choosing this peculiar site for their city; but these reasons were not equally valid in the case of the new invaders.  For them the surrounding salt-water was not needed as a protection, and was merely a nuisance.  Every year, when the lake rose, the place was flooded, with enormous damage to the property of the inhabitants; and sometimes an inundation of greater depth than usual threatened as complete a destruction as Cortes and the Tlascalans had made.  At the best of times, the site was a salt-swamp, an ugly place to build upon.  And, lastly, all the fresh water must be brought from the hills by aqueducts, which an enemy would cut off without difficulty, as the Spaniards themselves had done during the siege.  Now Cortes was certainly not ignorant of all this, and he knew of many places on the rising ground close by, where he could found his new city under more favourable circumstances.  He deliberated four or five months on the matter, and at last decided in favour of the old site, giving as his reason that “the city of Tenochtitlan had become celebrated, its position was wonderful, and in all times it had been considered as the capital and mistress of all these provinces.”

The invaders were old hands at slave-driving, and so hard did they drive the conquered Mexicans, that in four years there had arisen a fine Spanish city, with massive stone houses of several storeys, having the indispensable inner courts, flat roofs, and grated windows,—­every man’s house literally his castle, when once the great iron entrance-gates were closed.  The Indians had, of course, been converted en masse, and churches were being built in all directions.  The great pyramid where Huitzilopochtli, the God of war, was worshipped, had been razed to the ground, and its great sculptured blocks of basalt were sunk in the earth as a foundation for a cathedral.  The old lines of the streets, running toward the four points of the compass, were kept to; and to this it is that the present Mexico is indebted for much of its beauty.  Most of the smaller canals were filled up, and the thoroughfares widened for carriages, things