Little more than a week elapsed. In that time the swift native carriers had traversed and re-traversed the steep and rugged road from the coast to the valley of Anahuac, a distance of about two hundred miles each way. The substance of their message from Montezuma was "Come not hither; the road is long and dangerous; return to your country with our greetings to your great King." A magnificent present accompanied this somewhat chilling reply--articles of gold and silver, beautifully wrought, among them a huge gold plate, and one of silver, circular in form and "as large as carriage-wheels," twenty-eight spans in circumference, representing respectively the images of the sun and the moon and engraved with figures of animals, doubtless indicative of some chronological symbol--the value of the gold wheel was afterwards estimated at more than 50,000 pounds sterling--other articles of clothing and armour, including a number of beautiful golden shields inlaid and decorated, necklaces of rubies and pearls, and a quantity of the intricate and beautiful feather-work. What was the result of all this, upon the Spaniards--this wealth of treasure and this unencouraging greeting? "Go back again," was the substance of Cortes's reply to the ambassadors of Montezuma; "tell your monarch the mountain road and its dangers do not appal us--we who have sailed two thousand leagues of troubled ocean to arrive here--and we cannot return to our great sovereign without having personally greeted yours." Again the Spaniards waited the messengers' return, weary of the wind- and sand-swept plains of Vera Cruz; assailed by the _calenturas_ ever encountered upon the American coasts, the bilious malarial disorders which Nature has made the scourge of the tropics, and which the science of modern man has only just begun to investigate. Again the messengers--within ten days--returned. Stripped of its diplomatic covering of ceremony and further presents, the Aztec Emperor's reply may be condensed as "Get thee hence!" And, as if to bear out some royal mandate, the natives disappeared from the vicinity, the supplies were cut off, leaving the Spaniards halting upon this debatable ground, in chagrin and indecision.