There is no doubt that the Aztecs created a remarkable centre of semi-barbaric civilisation, and the descriptions given by the Spanish historians--whether those who accompanied Cortes, as Bernal Diaz, or those who drew their colouring from these accounts--are such as to arouse the interest and enthusiasm even of the reader of to-day. In this connection, of course, it is to be recollected that Cortes and his followers were not all men of education or trained knowledge of the great cities of the civilised world, and there is no doubt that they lacked somewhat the faculty of comparison, and over-estimated what they beheld. Let us translate from Clavijero, a Spanish historian and Jesuit who wrote later, and who describes the scene which the Spaniards beheld from the summit of the great Teocalli as "many beautiful buildings, gleaming, whitened, and burnished; the tall minarets of the temples scattered over the various quarters of the city; the canals; verdant plantations and gardens--all forming a beautiful whole which the Spaniards never ceased to admire, especially observing it from the summits of the great temples which dominated not only the city immediately below, but its environs and the large towns beyond. No less marvellous were the royal palaces and the infinite variety of plants and animals kept there; but nothing caused them greater admiration than the great market plaza." "Not a Spaniard of them," according to Bernal Diaz, the soldier-historian of the Conquest, who was there and saw it all, although he wrote about it long afterwards, "but held it in high praise, and some of them who had journeyed among European cities swore they had never seen so vast a concourse of merchants and merchandise."