MONUMENT TO THE AMERICANS.
Tacuba is a very small village, and is not in any wise noted except for an immense cypress-tree, that must have been a wonder even in the time of Cortéz. Tacuba has the historical notoriety of being the place where hostilities first broke out between the Aztecs and the Spaniards, and the spot where the night retreat of the latter terminated. Here the land is quite fertile, and a little way from the village are several water-mills, where the grain raised in this part of the valley is ground into flour.
THE VIRGIN OF REMEDIES.
A little way beyond Tacuba is the hill and temple of the Virgin of Remedies. It was upon this hill, within the inclosure of an Indian mound, that the retreating party of Cortéz made their first bivouac, and built fires and dressed their wounds. Hence they gave to the hill the name of Remedios, and the church afterward erected was dedicated to our Lady of Remedies. Diaz tells us that it became very celebrated in his time. The story about Cortéz finding a broken-nosed image in the knapsack of one of his soldiers is not mentioned either by himself or Bernal Diaz, and must therefore be an afterthought, to give plausibility to a subsequent imposition. From this point Cortéz and his party, without their women or treasures, trudged along to the foot of the hills to Tepeac, or Guadalupe, and thence around the foot of Tezcuco to the plains of Otumba.
The story is, that while Cortéz and his men were resting here, a soldier took from his knapsack an image, with nose broken and an eye wanting, which Cortéz made the patron saint of the expedition, and held it up to their adoration, and that this little incident so encouraged the men that they started off with renewed vigor. The whole of this story is probably a very silly modern invention. The bulk of the forces of Cortéz was most probably composed of that class of