And, lest I should venture too far, I will conclude this remark by adverting to the testimony of Diaz, which concedes that when his book was written the face of the country was substantially as it now is, and as I have already described it to be. But he endeavors to save the story of the Conquest by the shallow pretense that, during the few years that intervened between that event and the date of his history, the whole face of the country had completely changed.
The great mystery is why so large a body of Spaniards, if they really amounted to the number claimed by Cortéz, should have retreated from the city at all, as they do not complain of being short of provisions. They had the great teocalli for a fortress, on which they might have planted their cannon, and leveled the city in a few days, if not in a few hours, and the great Plaza in which to manœuvre their cavalry and protect the Indians while leveling the rubbish of the broken walls. But a panic having seized them, and having escaped from the city by a badly-managed night retreat, ten months elapsed before the Spaniards, on the 13th of May, 1521, laid siege to the city. And with varying success the siege was continued just three months, until Guatemozin was taken prisoner, on the 13th of August, 1521, so that the siege was carried on in the midst of the rainy season, when the flats must have been covered with water, and the ditches well filled. No difficulty was experienced in bringing up his flat-boats to the sides of the muddy causeways, or in cutting off the supplies of provisions by water, or in breaking down the earthen aqueduct of Chapultepec, so that the Indians were finally subdued by the combined forces of hunger and thirst. When, the Aztecs were so enfeebled by want that they could no longer offer resistance, the Spaniards rushed into the town, seized the