[183] Toribio, Hist. de los Indios, MS., Parte 3, cap. 1.--Father Sahagun, who has done better service in this way than any other of his order, describes with simple brevity the rapid process of demolition. “We took the children of the caciques,” he says, “into our schools, where we taught them to read and write, and to chant. The children of the poorer natives were brought together in the court-yard, and instructed there in the Christian faith. After our teaching, one or two brethren took the pupils to some neighboring _teocalli_, and, by working at it for a few days, they levelled it to the ground. In this way they demolished, in a short time, all the Aztec temples, great and small, _so that not a vestige of them remained_.” (Hist. de Nueva-España, tom. iii. p. 77.) This passage helps to explain why so few architectural relics of the Indian era still survive in Mexico. [184] “De manera que á mi juicio y verdaderamente serán bautizados en este tiempo que digo, que serán quince años, mas de nueve millones de ánimas de Indios.” Toribio, Hist. de los Indios, MS., Parte 2, cap. 3. [185] Clavigero, Stor. del Messico, tom. i. p. 43.--Humboldt, Essai politique, tom. iii. pp. 115, 145.--Esposicion de Don Lucás Alaman (México, 1828), p. 59. [186] “Páraque cada Navío traiga cierta cantidad de Plantas, y que no pueda salir sin ellas, porque será mucha causa para la Poblacion, y perpetuacion de ella.” Rel. Quarta de Cortés, ap. Lorenzana, p. 397.{*} {*} [The first wheat came from three grains which were found in a sack of rice. Other wheat had been received, but it was all more or less damaged by the voyage. See Tapia, Relacion.--M.] [187] “Item, que cualquier vecino que tubiere Indios de repartimiento sea obligado á poner en ellos en cada un año con cada cien Indios de los que tuvieren de repartimiento mil sarmientos aunque sean de la planta de su tierra, escogiendo la mejor que pudiesse hallar.” Ordenanzas municipales, año de 1524, MS. [188] Ordenanzas municipales, año de 1524, MS. [189] [“No general interest would attach to the private undertakings of Cortés, if the sole object of them had been the aggrandizement of his own fortune. But they were in fact the germs of what are now the most important branches of the national wealth; and they prove the grandeur of those views which in the times of the Conquest gave an impulse to whatever promised to contribute to the prosperity of the country.” Alaman, Disertaciones históricas, tom. ii. p. 63.] [190] “Tengo de ser causa, que Vuestra Cesarea Magestad sea en estas partes Señor de mas Reynos, y Señoríos que los que hasta hoy en nuestra Nacion se tiene noticia.” Rel. Quarta de Cortés, ap. Lorenzana, p. 374. [191] “Much as I esteem Hernando Cortés,” exclaims Oviedo, “for the greatest captain and most practised in military matters of any we have known, I think such an opinion shows he was no great cosmographer.” (Hist. de las Ind., MS., lib. 33, cap. 41.) Oviedo had lived to see its fallacy.