situated on the slope of a steep mountain, to which access could be had only by a stairway easily defended. It overlooked a sloping plain strewn with villages and farms, mustering in all nearly six thousand warriors.5 With replenished stores the expedition began to ascend the cordillera in reality, and to approach the pine forests which mark the border of the tierra fria. Marching through a hard pass named Nombre de Dios,6 they entered another province defended by a fortress, named Teoxihuacan,7 in no wise inferior to the first for strength or hospitality. They now finished the ascent of the cordillera, passed through Tejotla, and for three days continued their way through the alkaline wastes skirting the ancient volcano of Nauhcampatepetl,8 exposed to chilling winds and hailstorms, which the Spaniards with their quilted armor managed to endure, but which caused to succumb many of the less protected and less hardy Cubans. The brackish water also brought sickness. On the fourth day the pass of Puerto de Leña,9 so called from the wood piled near some temples, admitted them to the Anáhuac plateau, over seven thousand feet above the sea. With a less balmy climate and a flora less redundant than that of the Antillean stamping-ground, it offered on the other hand the attraction of being not unlike their native Spain. A smiling valley opened before them, doubly alluring to the pinched wanderers, with its broad fields of corn, dotted with houses, and displaying not far off the gleaming walls and thirteen towering temples of Xocotlan, the capital of the district. Some Portuguese soldiers declaring it the very picture of their cherished Castilblanco, this name was applied to it.10
Cacique Olintetl, nicknamed the temblador from the shaking of his fat body, came forth with a suite and escorted them through the plaza to the quarters assigned them, past pyramids of grinning human skulls, estimated by Bernal Diaz at over one hundred thousand. There were also piles of bones, and skulls suspended from beams, all of which produced far from pleasant impressions. This horror