August the sixteenth, 1519, was a day ushered in by brilliant sunshine, as if the fates were friendly to the daring Spanish adventurer. Cortés was now ready to advance into the interior, for he had obtained from the cacique of Cempoalla, thirteen hundred warriors and a thousand porters to carry his baggage and drag onward the guns. His own force amounted to four hundred foot and fifteen horses, with seven pieces of artillery. Surely a small and insignificant army with which to attempt to conquer this vast and populous land! The army set out upon its mission of conquest, and, at the close of the second day, reached Xalapa, a mountain town, and from which they looked back upon one of the grandest views which they had ever seen. Around were towering mountains; below lay the flat region, a gay confusion of meadows, streams, and flowering forests, with now and again a tiny Indian village dotting the brilliant landscape. Far, far away, to the eastward, was a faint line of light upon the horizon, which told them that there rolled the ocean which they had lately crossed, and beyond which slumbered their country, which many never expected to see again. To the south a mighty mountain, called “Orizaba,” poked its head into the air, covered with a mantle of snow; while toward the southwest the Sierra Madre, with a dark belt of pine trees waving in the breeze, stretched with a long line of shadowy hills into the distance. Onward and upward crawled the little army, pushing and jerking the guns over the rocks and crevices, and finally, on the fourth day, arrived at the town of Naulinco. The Indian inhabitants entertained the soldiers with great hospitality, for they were friendly with the Totonacs. Cortés endeavored to persuade them to give up their savage idol worship, and, through a priest, Father Almedo, had them instructed in the teachings of Christianity and had a cross erected for future worship. The troops pressed onward, entered a narrow, ragged valley, called “the Bishop’s Pass,” and, as they toiled around a bare, volcanic mountain, a snow-storm descended upon them with great violence. The Indians, who were natives of the flat region, suffered dreadfully, and several of them died by the way. The Spaniards, however, were protected by their thick coats of cotton, and thus bore up well beneath the change of climate. For three days the little band pressed forward over the rugged mountain trail,—then emerged into an open country with a more genial climate. They had reached the great table-land which spreads out for hundreds of miles along the crests of the mountains, more than seven thousand feet above the level of the sea. Carefully cultivated fields of corn lay around them, and, as they trudged forward, they came upon a populous city made of substantial buildings of stone and of lime.