Almost the entire populace of the city, some twenty-five thousand,27 staring their wonderment with open eyes and mouth, thronged either side of the way along which marched the army in battle array, headed by the cavalry.
Never before had the Spaniards seen so beautiful an American city. Cortés called it Seville,
a name which Spaniards frequently applied to any place that pleased them, as we have seen, while the soldiers, charmed with its floral wealth and beauty, termed it Villaviciosa, and declared it a terrestrial paradise.
One of the cavalry scouts, on first beholding the freshly stuccoed walls gleaming in the sun, came galloping back with the intelligence that the houses were silver-plated. It was indeed an important place, holding a large daily market. A central plaza was inclosed by imposing temples and palaces, resting on pyramidal foundations, lined with apartments and surmounted by towers, and around clustered neat dwellings with whitened adobe walls embowered in foliage. Statelier edifices of masonry, some having several court-yards, rose here and there, while in every direction spread an extensive suburb of mud huts with the never failing palm-leaf roof. Yet even the humblest abodes were smothered in flowers.28