230 HOUSES AND HOUSE-LIFE OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 
entertained in a house that had large courts, upper and lower floors, and very 
delightful gardens. ‘The walls were of stone, the timber-work well wrought; 
there were many and spacious rooms, hung with cotton hangings, extraor- 
‘His accommodations in the pueblo of Mexico 
dinary rich in their way.” 
will elsewhere be noticed. After the capture of the pueblo, Alvaredo was 
sent southward with two hundred feot and forty horse to the province of 
Tututlepec, on the Pacific. ‘When he arrived, the lord of Tututlepec 
offered to quarter the Spaniards in his palace, which was very magnificent.”? 
In 1525 Cortez made his celebrated march to Guatemala with one hundred 
and fifty horse, the same number of foot, and three hundred Indians. “‘ Be- 
ing well received in the city of Apoxpalan, Cortez and all the Spaniards, 
with their horses, were quartered in one house, the Mexicans being dispersed 
into others, and all of them plentifully supplied with provisions during 
their stay.”* The first “‘palace” described by Herrera was discovered by 
Balboa somewhere in the present Costa Rica, and Comagre has gone into 
history as its proprietor. “This palace was mere remarkable and better 
built than any that had been yet seen on the islands, or the little that was 
then known of the continent, being one hundred and fifty paces in length 
and eighty in breadth, founded on very large posts, inclosed by a stone 
wall, with timber intermixed at the top, and hollow spaces, so beautifully 
wrought that the Spaniards were amazed at the sight of it, and could not 
express the manner and curiosity of it. There were in it several chambers 
and apartments, and one that was like a buttery and full of such provisions 
as the country afforded, as bread, venison, swine’s flesh, &c. There was 
another large room like a cellar, full of earthern vessels, containing several 
sorts of white and red liquors, made of Indian wheat,”* ete. The notice- 
=) 
able fact in this description is the two chambers, containing provisions and 
stores for the household, whieh was undoubtedly the case with all of those 
named. Zempoala, near Vera Cruz, is described as ‘‘a very large town, 
with stately buildings of good timber work, and every house had a garden 
with water, so that it looked like a terrestrial paradise. * * * The 
scouts, advancing on horseback, came to the great square and courts where 
the prime houses were, which having been lately new plastered over, were 
‘History of America, ii, 325. 2Tb., iii, 273. 3Ib., iii, 273. 41b., ii, 297. 
