worship of God,—the safety of the body after death,—and the permanent idea of loyal obedience to authority,—are symbolized by the temple,—tomb,—and the rock-built palace. The masses, who felt they had no constant abiding place on earth, did not in all probability, build for themselves those substantial and beautifully embellished homes, under whose influence modern civilization has so far exceeded the barren humanism of the valley of the Nile. It was useless, they deemed, to enshrine in marble whilst living, the miserable spirit that, after death, might crawl in a crocodile or burrow in a hog. Christianity, alone, has made the Dwelling paramount to the Tomb and the Palace.
We cannot leave the early history of Spanish occupation without naturally casting our eyes over the empire which it was the destiny of Cortéz to conquer. Of its geographical boundaries we know but little. The dominions of the original Aztecs covered but a small part of the territory comprehended in modern Mexico; and although they were enlarged during the empire, they did not even then extend beyond the eighteenth degree and the twenty-first on the Atlantic or Gulf, and beyond the fourteenth and nineteenth degree including a narrow slip on the Pacific.
The seat and centre of the Mexican empire was in the valley of Mexico, in a temperate climate, whose genial mildness is gained by its elevation of over seven thousand feet above the level of the sea. The features of this region,—the same now as at the conquest,—will be more fully described hereafter in those chapters which treat of the geography and statistics of modern Mexico.
On the eastern or western borders of the lake of Tezcoco, facing each other, stood the ancient cities of Tenochtitlan or Mexico, and of Tezcoco. These were the capitals of the two most famous, flourishing and civilized states of Anahuac, the sources of whose population and progress are veiled in the general mystery that overhangs the early history of our continent.