fields wherein maize and agave, cochineal and chile, swelled the resources of the owners. “No city in Spain,” exclaims Cortés, “presents a more beautiful exterior, with its even surface and mass of towers,” interspersed with charming gardens and fringed with alluring groves. Its six sections were marked by fine, straight streets, lined with buildings, the neatness and substantial appearance of which fully corresponded to the reputed wealth of the occupants. Cortés estimates the number of houses at twenty thousand, with as many more in the suburbs, which implies a population of two hundred thousand.4
Cholula was one of the most ancient settlements in the country, with traditions reaching far back into the misty past. It was here that Quetzalcoatl had left the final impress of his golden age as ruler and prophet, and here that a grateful people had raised to him the grandest of his many temples, erected upon the ruins of a tower of Babel which had been stayed in its growth by divine interference. Notwithstanding the vicissitudes of war, during which the frenzy of the moment had overcome religious scruples to wreak destruction, or during which reckless invaders less imbued with veneration came to desecrate this western Rome, she had maintained herself, ever rising from the ashes with renewed vigor and fresh splendor, and she was at this time the commercial centre for
the great Huitzilapan plateau, famous beside for her pottery and delicate fabrics. The warlike Tlascaltecs referred to her contemptuously as a city of cunning and effeminate traders, and there was doubtless a good deal of truth in this; but then her merchants rivalled those of Mexico in wealth, while her citizens were not behind the dwellers on the lake in refinement.
But the chief renown of Cholula consisted in being the holy city of Anáhuac, unequalled for the frequency and pomp of her festivals and sacred pageantry; in being the religious centre for countless pilgrims who