Next morning we took the road again before dawn, for the cold was so sharp at this great height that we, who had travelled from the hot land, could sleep very little, and also Guatemoc desired if it were possible to reach the city that night.
When we had gone a few hundred paces the path came to the crest of the mountain range, and I halted suddenly in wonder and admiration.

Below me lay a vast bowl of land and water, of which, however, I could see nothing, for the shadows of the night still filled it.

But before me, piercing the very clouds, towered the crests of two snow-clad mountains, and on these the light of the unrisen sun played, already changing their whiteness to the stain of blood.

Popo, or the Hill that Smokes, is the name of the one, and Ixtac, or the Sleeping Woman, that of the other, and no grander sight was ever offered to the eyes of man than they furnished in that hour before the dawn.

From the lofty summit of Popo went up great columns of smoke which, what with the fire in their heart and the crimson of the sunrise, looked like rolling pillars of flame.