Long sieges had never suited the native ideas of warfare, and experience could therefore teach little in the preparation for the event. Vast supplies had been accumulated by the Mexicans, but a large influx of fugitives from the lake towns had swelled the number of non-combatants and had helped to diminish the food supply, which had received but scanty additions, owing to the close watch of the cruisers. Nor had any restrictions been placed on consumption, since the provisions were chiefly in private hands. Now famine was raging with rapidly increasing horrors, and jewels were offered by the handful for an equal quantity of food.5
Excluded from such competition, the poorer classes sought in holes and canals for snails, lizards, and rats, skimmed the surface of the water for its mucilaginous scum, or tore up the earth for roots and weeds, glad even to chew the bark of trees, and anxiously waiting for the scanty allowance of brackish water.
Disease was marching hand-in-hand with hunger, and weakened by their sufferings hundreds were left to linger in torment till welcome death relieved them. The frequency of these incidents made the people callous, and the sufferings even of near friends were looked on with indifference by the gaunt and hollow-eyed, who were themselves marked for death.
Regardless of the consequences, many crept at night close to the Spanish camps in search of roots and refuse which could no longer be found within their precincts. Advised of such movements, a body of soldiers and allies was sent out before sunrise one day and fell on a large number, slaughtering many of them before discovering them to be starving women and children.6 It was necessary to take increased measures even against these surreptitious attempts to sustain the defence, and to keep in the useless