Late in the afternoon the army reached the southern border of Tlascala, and camped by a river two leagues from Cholula. The city stood in a vast fertile plain, so thickly covered with plantations and gardens “that not a span of land remained uncultivated.”
A network of ditches irrigated the 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