But why dwell longer upon the appalling details of this miserable siege. The day of predicted vengeance arrived, and the Spaniards survived it. Their superstitious terror-stricken allies returned to their allegiance. By a judicious administration of reward and discipline, of promise and threatening, all disaffection was hushed. New measures of offence were concerted, with a determination, on the part of the besiegers, to press into the city by degrees, securing every step, as they advanced, by levelling every building, and filling up every ditch, in their progress, till not one stone should be left upon another in Tenochtitlan. This terrible resolution was carried into effect. Every building, whether public or private, palace, temple, or Teocalli, from which they could be annoyed by the indomitable Aztec, was laid waste. The canals were filled up and levelled, so as to give free scope for the movements of the cavalry and artillery. The beautiful suburbs were reduced to a level plain, a dry arid waste, covered with the ruins of all that was dear and sacred in the eyes of the Aztec. Slowly, but surely, the Spaniard pressed on towards the heart of the city, in which the heroic monarch, with his miserable remnant of starving subjects and skeleton soldiers were pent up, dying by thousands of famine and pestilence, and yet ready to suffer a thousand deaths, rather than yield themselves up to the mercy of the foe. There was now absolutely nothing left, in earth or air, to sustain for another day the poor remains of life in the camp of the besieged. Every foot of ground had been dug over many times, in quest of roots, and even of worms. The leaves and bark had been stripped from every tree and shrub, till there was not a green thing on all those terraces, which were once like the gardens of Elysium. The dead and the dying lay in heaps together, for there was neither life nor spirit in any that breathed, to do the last office for the departed. Pestilence was in all the air, so that many even of the besieging army snuffed it in the breeze that swept over the city, and fell victims to the very fate which their cruel rapacity was inflicting on the besieged.