banner waved a proud welcome, while beside it the still impaled heads of white and dusky victims recalled the bitter vengeance yet to be exacted. Surveying the city beneath him on all sides, Cortés says: “It seemed undoubted that of eight parts we had gained seven.” The late magnificent metropolis, the finest and largest on all the northern continent, displayed now a mass of ruins, through which the broad paths levelled by the invaders led to the one corner which alone remained to the besieged,17 wherein, amid famine, pest, and putrefying bodies, they huddled in packed masses, sending forth from their midst the groans of dying and loud lamentations, in an atmosphere so pestiferous that the soldiers who entered the lately abandoned lanes were almost stifled. People were found in different stages of hunger and disease, meeting the soldiers with passive indifference in the recklessness of despair. Beyond on the roofs stalked the warriors, gaunt and yellow, like caged and starving beasts.
Cortés felt painfully oppressed on beholding so much misery, and at once ordering a stay of hostilities he sent some captive chiefs to Quauhtemotzin with peace proposals, showing the utter futility of further resistance, which could involve only a needless infliction of suffering and slaughter, and embitter against him