220 MEXICO. 
A kindlier heart, however, exists not on earth ; and to him and to his Mexi- 
can wife, I am indebted for many a pleasant hour, beguiled by the exqui- 
site music of the one, and the story of wild adventure of the other. 
TEZCOCO. 
8th October. We rose early. Every symptom of yesterday's storm 
was swept from the sky — a clear and beautiful day, mild as our June. 
After breakfast we sallied forth to make arrangements for our journey 
to Teotihuacan, but found that the person who was to furnish us with 
horses had gone on a bull-catching expedition to a neighboring hacienda. 
Finding it, therefore, impossible to make any excursions to the neighbor- 
hood to-day, we amused ourselves by strolling over the town' and seeing 
all that is interesting in the way of antiquarian research. 
At the period of the conquest, Tezcoco was the second city of the 
JVTexican Empire ; and what it must have been in splendor and vas^ess, 
may be judged from the account I have heretofore given of the Capital 
itself. Situated, then, on the borders of the lake, (the spot from which 
Cortez launched his brigantines when he invested Mexico by water.) it 
perhaps resembled Pisa both in power and importance ; but every trace 
of its former magnificence has disappeared, and it has dwindled to 
scarcely more than a respectable village, where a few herdsmen, fisher- 
men, and farmers have gathered together for mutual protection and traffic. 
The large Plaza is silent and deserted — the people loll about their shops 
and houses as on a holyday — a universal quietude rests over the whole 
town — and a general listlessness seems to prevail both in regard to the 
present and the future.* 
I was particularly struck with one bad feature in the character of the 
Tezcocans — a disregard for their dead. In passing through the western 
portion of the town we came to the parish church, which was being re- 
paired. On entering the square in front of it, I stumbled against a 
human skull ; a little farther on, I found the niches in the walls filled 
with them ; — the floor of the edifice was taken up, and the dead-pits had 
been cleaned and scraped, yet the remains of the human frame were still 
plenteously scattered over the bottom, and the stench was intolerable. 
The whole surface of the yard was strewn with ribs and thigh bones — 
lower jaws — teeth — and fragments of skulls, and a huge pile of I'icli, 
Mack mould, mottled with human hones, was thrown in a corner — the contents 
of the pits within. 
* When Cortez entered the city of Tezcoco, on the last day of the year 1520, the nobles ciime out tii 
meet him, and conducted him to one of the Palaces of the late King Nezahualcojotl, which was large enough, 
according to the Conqueror, " to contain not only the six hundred Spaniards who were lodged in it, but as 
'iianv 7no7'f."— Clavigero, Book x., vol. 2, p. 139. 
