So pass the cultured, shadowy Toltecs from our vision. They had been preceded in their southward migration by the Otomies, in the seventh century A.D., an exceedingly numerous and primitive people who almost annihilated the Spaniards during the Conquest, and whose descendants to-day occupy a vast region, and still largely speak their own language, rather than Spanish. The Toltecs were succeeded by yet another tribe "from the north," the Chichemecas, who came down and occupied their civilisation of Tula. These people, warlike and inferior in culture to the Toltecs, allied themselves with the neighbouring Nahua tribes, and an empire came into being, with its capital at Texcoco, on the shore of the great lake. The famous Nezahualcoyotl, the poet-king of this empire, who ascended the throne of Texcoco in 1431, was one of the most remarkable figures of prehistoric Anahuac, and his genius and fortunes recall the history of Alfred of England, to the student's mind. He built a splendid palace at Texcotzinco, and ruins of its walls and aqueducts remain to this day. His life is sketched in these pages subsequently, and something of the beauty of his philosophy set forth. And thus history has brought us again to the Aztecs, the founders of Tenochtitlan by the lake-shore, on the spot indicated by their oracle. They had come "from the north," one of seven tribes or families, all of which spoke the Nahuatl or Mexican tongue. This unknown country, called Astlan, or "the land of the herons," was the home of these seven tribes--the Mexicas, or Aztecs, the Tlascalans, Xochimilcas, Tepanecas, Colhuas, Chalcas and Tlahincas--and has been varyingly assigned a locality in California, and in Sinaloa. Why the Aztecs left their northern home is not known, even in legend, but they were instigated to their wanderings, tradition says, by their fabled war-god, Huitzilopochtli, or Mexitl, from whom came the name "Mexica" or "Azteca," by which these people called themselves. From the beginning of the tenth to the beginning of the thirteenth century A.D. this tribe journeyed and sojourned on its southward way, from valley to valley, from lake to lake, from Chapala to Patzcuaro, and thence to Tula, the old Toltec capital. Once more dispersed, they wandered on, and, guided by their oracle, reached their final resting-place at Tenochtitlan. This name, by which they designated their capital, was derived either from that of Tenoch, their venerated high priest, or from the Aztec words meaning "stone-serpent," in reference to the emblem they had followed.