And, lastly, all the fresh water must be brought from the hills by aqueducts, which an enemy would cut off without difficulty, as the Spaniards themselves had done during the siege.

Now Cortes was certainly not ignorant of all this, and he knew of many places on the rising ground close by, where he could found his new city under more favourable circumstances.

He deliberated four or five months on the matter, and at last decided in favour of the old site, giving as his reason that "the city of Tenochtitlan had become celebrated, its position was wonderful, and in all times it had been considered as the capital and mistress of all these provinces." The invaders were old hands at slave-driving, and so hard did they drive the conquered Mexicans, that in four years there had arisen a fine Spanish city, with massive stone houses of several storeys, having the indispensable inner courts, flat roofs, and grated windows,--every man's house literally his castle, when once the great iron entrance-gates were closed.

The Indians had, of course, been converted en masse, and churches were being built in all directions.

The great pyramid where Huitzilopochtli, the God of war, was worshipped, had been razed to the ground, and its great sculptured blocks of basalt were sunk in the earth as a foundation for a cathedral.