spring, or fountain, has also been applied. But most writers have contented themselves by assuming it to be identical with the _mexi_, _mexitl_, or _mecitl_, appellation of the war god, Huitzilopochtli, to which has been added the co, an affix implying locality; hence Mexico would imply the place or settlement of _Mexica_, or _Mexicans_. This war god, Huitzilopochtli, as is well known, was the mythic leader and chief deity of the Aztecs, the dominant tribe of the Nahua nation. It was by this august personage, who was also called Mexitl, that, according to tradition, the name was given them in the twelfth century, and in these words: ‘Inaxcan aocmoamotoca ynamaz te ca ye am mexica,’ Henceforth bear ye not the name Azteca, but Mexica. With this command they received the distinguishing mark of a patch of gum and feathers to wear upon their forehead and ears. _Bancroft’s Native Races_, ii. 559; iii. 295-6; v. 324-5 et passim. I can offer no stronger proof as to the way in which the name was regarded at the time of the conquest, and afterwards, than by placing side by side the maps of the sixteenth century and instituting a comparison. In _Apiano_, _Cosmographica_, 1575, is a map, supposed to be a copy of one drawn by Apianus in 1520, on which _Themisteton_ is given apparently to a large lake in the middle of Mexico; Fernando Colon, in 1527, and Diego de Ribero, 1529, both give the word _Mexico_ in small letters, inland, as if applied to a town, although no town is designated; Ptolemy, in _Munster_, 1530, gives _Temistitan_; _Munich Atlas_, no. vi., supposed to have been drawn between 1532 and 1540, _Timitistan vel Mesicho_; Baptista Agnese, 1540-50, _Timitistan vel Mesico_; Ramusio, 1565, _Mexico_; _Mercator’s Atlas_, 1569, _Mexico_, as a city, and _Tenuchitlan_; Michael Lok, 1582, _Mexico_, in Hondius, about 1595, in _Drake’s World Encompassed_, the city is _Mexico_, and the gulf _Baia di Mexico_; Hondius, in _Purchas, His Pilgrimes_, Laet, Ogilby, Dampier, _West-Indische Spieghel_, Jacob Colom, and other seventeenth-century authorities, give uniformly to the city, or to the city and province, but not to the country at large, the name as at present written. CHAPTER II. JUAN DE GRIJALVA EXPLORES THE WESTERN SIDE OF THE MEXICAN GULF. 1518.