“smoking ruins” must be dismissed as a creation of the imagination. Adobe and stone walls, and roof timbers covered with a thick coating of earth, do not afford good material for a conflagration. The 20,000 warriors from Mexico mentioned on p. 194 could not have been present. It would have been impossible for so large a body to have been sent from that city, and Cortés would have learned of its approach, through his Tlascalan allies, long before. Bandelier treats the massacre very lucidly in his “Gilded Man,” pp. 258-282.--M.] But, whatever be thought of this transaction in a moral view, as a stroke of policy it was unquestionable. The nations of Anahuac had beheld, with admiration mingled with awe, the little band of Christian warriors steadily advancing along the plateau in face of every obstacle, overturning army after army with as much ease, apparently, as the good ship throws off the angry billows from her bows, or rather like the lava, which, rolling from their own volcanoes, holds on its course unchecked by obstacles, rock, tree, or building, bearing them along, or crushing and consuming them in its fiery path. The prowess of the Spaniards--“the white gods,” as they were often called[221]--made them to be thought invincible. But it was not till their arrival at Cholula that the natives learned how terrible was their vengeance; and they trembled! None trembled more than the Aztec emperor on his throne among the mountains. He read in these events the dark characters traced by the finger of Destiny.[222] He felt his empire melting away like a morning mist. He might well feel so. Some of the most important cities in the neighborhood of Cholula, intimidated by the fate of that capital, new sent their envoys to the Castilian camp, tendering their allegiance, and propitiating the favor of the strangers by rich presents of gold and slaves.[223] Montezuma, alarmed at these signs of defection, took counsel again of his impotent deities; but, although the altars smoked with fresh hecatombs of human victims, he obtained no cheering response. He determined, therefore, to send another embassy to the Spaniards, disavowing any participation in the conspiracy of Cholula.