LETTER XX. 
THE GITY DF MEXICO AS IT WAS AT THE CONQITEST. 
After having given an account of the antiquities which survived the 
ravages of the conquerors, (who, with a blind zeal to establish their 
power and religion, overthrew temple, tower, and almost every record of 
the Indians,) it has struck me that a notice or sketch of the city of Mon- 
tezuma, its sovereign and people, would not be uninteresting to even the 
most careless reader. I have, therefore, gathered from the letters of 
Cortez to the Emperor Charles the V., and the history of Bernal Diaz del 
Castillo, such accounts as appear to be most authentic, not only because 
they impress us with the grandeur and advanced civilization of the 
Indians, but because they may probably serve to establish a connection 
between the inhabitants of the Valley of Mexico and the people who, 
dwelling farther south, were the builders and occupants of the temples 
and palaces which have lately been revealed to us 'in the picturesque 
pages of Stephens and Catherwood. 
" The province which constitutes the principal territory of Montezuma," 
(says Cortez in his letter to Charles the V.,) " is circular, and entirely sur- 
rounded by lofty and rugged mountains, and the circumference of it is 
full seventy leagues. In this plain there are two lakes which nearly oc- 
cupy the whole of it, as the people use canoes for more than fifty leagues 
round. One of these lakes is of fresh water, and the other, which is 
larger, is of salt water. They are divided, on one side, by a small col- 
lection of high hills, which stand in the centre of the plain, and they unite 
in a level strait formed between these hills and the high mountains, which 
strait is a gun-shot wide, and the people of the cities and other settlements 
which are in these lakes, communicate together in their canoes by water, 
without the necessity of going by land. And as this great salt lake ebbs 
and flows with the tide, as the sea does, in every flood the water flows 
from it into the other fresh lake as impetuously as if it were a large river, 
and consequently at the ebb, the fresh lake flows into the salt. 
" This great city of Temixtitlan, (meaning Tenotchtitlan, Mexico,) is 
founded in this salt lake ; and from terra firma to the body of the city, the . 
distance is two leagues on which ever side they please to enter it. 
" It has four entrances, or causeways, made by the hand of man, as wide 
as two horsemen's lan/'"s. 
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