thread of all colors in skein are exposed for sale in one quarter of the market, which has the appearance of the silk market at Granada, although the former is more abundantly supplied. Painters' colors as numerous as can be found in Spain, and as fine shades; deerskins dressed and undressed, dyed different colors; earthenware of a large size and excellent quality; large and small jars, jugs, pots, bricks, and an endless variety of vessels, all made of fine clay, and all, or most of them, glazed and painted....

"Every kind of merchandise is sold in a particular street or quarter assigned to it exclusively, and thus the best order is preserved. They sell everything by number or measure; at least so far we have not observed them to sell anything by weight. There is a building in the great square that is used as an audience house, where ten or twelve persons, who are magistrates, sit and decide all controversies that arise in the market, and order delinquents to be punished. In the same square there are other persons who go constantly about among the people observing what is sold, and the measures used in selling; and they have been seen to break measures that were not true."

Religion: The Aztecs, like the Greeks, were pantheists. In addition to a supreme being, corresponding to the Olympian Jove, they worshipped thirteen major gods and over two hundred inferior divinities. Two of their gods deserve special mention. One of these, Quetzalcoatl, the God of the Air, or the Fair God, was the god of peace and of prosperity. It was he who had taught men to cultivate the earth, to work in metals, and to make laws. But Quetzalcoatl had been driven from the country by a stronger divinity, leaving among the Aztecs the tradition of his kindly rule and the promise of his beneficent return. The legends pictured him as a being of princely stature, with white instead of copper colored skin, a full beard and thick black hair. In the coming of Cortés, the Aztecs saw at first the fulfillment of this cherished prophecy.

In direct contrast to the character of the Fair God, was the Aztec conception of Huitzilopotchli, or Mexitli, their ferocious God of War. After making all due allowance for the prejudice and exaggeration of the Spanish conquerors in their descriptions of the worship of this inhuman deity, the fact still remains that the practices of the Aztec religion were as cruel and bloodthirsty as any the world has known.

The largest of the Aztec temples was built of stone, in the form of a truncated pyramid, and overlooked all other buildings of the city. "Three of its sides were smooth," according to the quaint old description of Don Antonio de Solis, "while the fourth had stairs wrought in the stone; a sumptuous building and extremely well proportioned. It was so high that the staircase. contained a hundred and twenty steps, and of so large compass that on the top it terminated in a flat, forty-foot square. The pavement was beautifully laid with jasper stones of all colors. The rails, which went around in the nature of a balustrade, were of a serpentine form, and both sides were covered with stones resembling jet, placed in good order, and joined with white and

red cement, which was a very great ornament to the building." A thick wall, eight feet high, surrounded the temple proper, making an enclosed area large enough to contain a village of 500 families. Gardens, sanctuaries, shrines, and apartments for the priests were contained within this enclosure. The encircling walls were cut by four huge gates, each of which faced one of the cardinal points of the compass.

The most characteristic feature of the Aztec religion was the human sacrifice in various forms. Sometimes the victims were drowned, sometimes burned, sometimes starved to death, sometimes compelled to take part in a sort of gladiatorial contest against overwhelming odds. The most common, as well as the most revolting form of sacrifice, however, was conducted by the priests on the great altar stone on top of the temple. The method of carrying out this rite was thus described by one of the early Spanish chroniclers:

"At the sound of musical instruments they brought forth an Indian from among the prisoners taken in war. He was accompanied and surrounded by illustrious noblemen. His limbs were painted red, with white stripes; one-half of his face was painted red; a white plume was glued into his hair; he carried in one hand a walking stick, very gay with knots and ties of leather, and some feathers inserted in it; in the other hand he bore a shield with five small bundles of cotton on it; on his back was a little bundle which held a few eagle feathers, lumps of ocre, pieces of gypsum, candlewood, and papers bound with rubber."

When the procession reached the top of the great temple, the victim was placed upon the sacrificial stone; and there, in the sight of all the city below, "four ministers of the sacrifice seized him by the hands and feet and held him fast, while the high priest ascended to the rock with his knife in his hand and cut the victim's throat....The blood drained into the bowl in the center of the rock, and poured through a canal, and ran down the side in front of the chamber of the sun; and the sun, sculptured on the face of the rock was drenched with blood."'

The heart of the victim was afterwards cut out and presented to the sun, and the body, or certain parts of it, eaten by the worshipers.

In perhaps the most typical form of sacrifice, the heart was torn out while the sacrifice remained alive. The skulls of the victims were spitted and placed as a gruesome fringe around the temple. Statements, perhaps exaggerated, credit the Aztec priests with sacrificing 20,000 persons annually in this worship, and of putting to death 60,000 victims when the great temple. was dedicated.

The significance of this debasing and dehumanizing religion in Aztec history ought not to be overlooked. Its chief influence was to render its followers callous to human suffering and indifferent to human life. It also furnished a plausible explanation for the harsh measures adopted by the Spanish conquerors to subdue the city. Finally, the demand for victims for the sacrifice did much to drive the tributary tribes into alliance with the Spaniards against the Aztecs when Cortés appeared.

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established. Nobles, soldiers, merchants, artisans, negroes, speculators, priests, friars, and slave traders jostled each other in the public square of the city of San Domingo; and in the harbor, caravel, galleon, and brigantine were loading up with Brazil and other native woods, cotton, sugar, and gold ingots, and complaining letters from those in power and those out of power, and were taking on board a motley homeward-bound company of suspended officials returning to Spain under a cloud, Jews and new converts expelled from the island, and Carib slaves."

Using the West Indies as a basis for colonizing efforts, various adventurous leaders had already sought to establish settlements on the mainland prior to the appearance of Cortés upon the scene. Castilla del Oro, with its center at Darién, was among the earliest of these. The moving spirit of the Darién settlement, Vasco Nuñez Balboa, in 1513 discovered the South Sea or the Pacific. Other expeditions to regions now included in Central America, brought back sufficient gold and vivid enough reports to fire the ambition and imagination of every eager spirit in the West Indies.

In 1517, Velásquez, the founder of Havana and Governor of Cuba, a "man covetous of glory and somewhat more so of money," sent one of his lieutenants, Hernández de Córdova, on an exploring and slaving expedition to the coast of Yucatán. Córdova, who was "very prudent and courageous and strongly disposed to kill and kidnap Indians," found evidences of an advanced civilization in Yucatán and brought back tales of the remarkable wealth of the inhabitants.

The next year Velásquez sent out a second expedition under Grijalva, who sailed as far north as the Pánuco River and secured some $20,000 in gold from the coast natives. Incidentally, too, he heard vague reports of a great king in the interior, who lived in a marvelous palace, ruled over a vast empire, and possessed unlimited quantities of gold, silver and precious stones. Stirred by these reports, Velásquez once more outfitted an expedition for the mainland. The command of this venture was entrusted to a man of middle life, named Hernando Cortés, whose boldness in the face of opportunity, and remarkable skill as an organizer had only begun to appear in his character. The expedition over which Cortés was made commander consisted of a fleet of 11 vessels, carrying on board 600 men, 200 Indian slaves, 16 horses, 13 firelocks, 10 guns, and 4 falconets.

Before the expedition sailed, Velásquez repented of having appointed Cortés its leader and sought to recall him. But Cortés paid no regard to the governor's message, and sailed from Cuba on February 18, 1519. After touching on the shores of Yucatán and Tabasco, he continued northward and on April 21, 1519, founded a settlement on the Mexican coast to which he gave the name of the Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz. To the authorities of this municipal government, which he himself had established, Cortés then resigned his commission from Velásquez and

received from them, acting ostensibly for the Spanish crown, a new appointment to command the expedition. Then, at the head of a mere handful of men, Cortés set out for the interior, there to conquer a kingdom and lay the foundations for three hundred years of Spanish rule.

The Conquest: The march of Cortés from the coast to Mexico. has aptly been called a "succession of audacious deeds." Sometimes playing upon the hostility of the conquered tribes against the Aztecs, he built up strong alliances with the native rulers that furnished material reinforcements for the meager force of Spaniards. Again, either suspecting treachery or wishing to teach a terrible lesson to any who might oppose his advance, he ordered his men to fall upon an Indian tribe-the Cholulansand, unless the number has been greatly magnified, slew 6000 of them in two days of bloody fighting.

Meanwhile, in the palace of Montezuma there was fear and vacillation, born more of superstition than of physical cowardice. For Montezuma, a "superstitious fatalist," dared not oppose the coming of Cortés, in whom he saw the fulfillment of the old Aztec prophecy of the return of Quetzalcoatl. The whitesailed ships in which the Spaniards reached the coast; the horses upon which they rode-such animals as no Mexican had ever seen before; the noise and death that came from their firearms; the white skins, black hair, and beards of the strangers, all led the Aztec Emperor to believe the Fair God had once more returned to rule over his people.

Augmenting this conviction, according to the old Spanish accounts, were many "Presages, horrible, and wonderful Portents, which God either ordained, or permitted to depress the Spirits of those fierce people and render less impossible to the Spaniards that great work which his Providence was about to accomplish, by means so disproportioned to it."

Due chiefly to Montezuma's superstitious fears, Cortés and his command were given a friendly welcome to the city of Mexico by the Aztec sovereign. With equal wonder, the short, bronze Indians saw the tall, armed Spaniards, some of them mounted on strange, four-legged beasts, pass through the streets of the city to Montezuma's palace, and the Spaniards noted the evidences of civilization, the buildings, the shops in the market places, the strange fruits and birds, the abundant supplies of precious metals, and the oriental splendor of the royal court. It was natural, too, that what they saw should be magnified and made more magnificent than in reality it was.

Relations between the invaders and the Aztecs did not continue long on a friendly basis. Cortés, realizing the hopelessness of his position in the face of a concerted uprising, compelled Montezuma to live as a hostage with the Spaniards. But long