Never was there a band of Anglo-Saxon outlaws, cut-throats, pirates, or buccaneers that reached that point of human depravity that they could brand, as cattle are branded, with a red-hot iron, swarms of women taken by violence, in order that they might not make any mistakes in recognizing their numberless wives! None but Spanish heroes of a "holy war" ever exhibited such a picture of total depravity. When the Aztecs were thus roused to action by the brutal lust of Cortez, they assailed him with phrensy rather than with courage, until his quarters in the city became untenable, and then this night retreat was undertaken, in which all the gold, if there really was any, and all other treasures, and two sons and one daughter of Montezuma, were lost in the confused rush of such a multitude over this foot-path. The Indian story is that Cortez slew the children of Montezuma when he found himself unable to carry them off. Perhaps he did, but the probability is that they perished by chance, or, rather, it seems to have been by chance that Cortez or any of his gang escaped and came safe to Tacuba. We must now give up history to talk of things by the road-side. The "hard water" from the springs on the south side of Chapultepec is carried over stone arches upon the causeway of Tacubaya to the gate of Belin. But at Santa Fe, several leagues distant from the city, is a stream of soft water, which is brought to the powder-mill (_Molina del Rey_), where it turns a wheel. Thence the aqueduct, passing by the north side of Chapultepec, is carried along the highway to the causeway of San Cosmo. It passes the gate of San Cosmo, enters the city, and terminates in the street of Tacuba. By these two gates, and by the side of these two parallel aqueducts, the American army entered the city of Mexico. The objects of interest by the road-side, after I had passed the city gate, were, first, the French Academy, which is well worthy of a visit for its pretty grounds, if nothing more. When we had got farther on, the land rose a little above the water-level of the swamp. Here a branch-road and the aqueduct turned off to Chapultepec, and in the angle thus formed by the two roads is the English burying-ground or cemetery. In this resting-place of the dead there is not a spot that can not be irrigated at all seasons of the year, while the art of man has been busy in improving the advantages that nature has so lavishly bestowed.