I saw it too, and I heard the scream, In the midst of my dark and troubled dream; 'Twas a dream of despair for our doomed land, For his wings were bound by the royal hand; His talons were wreathed with a golden chain, He smelt the prey, and he chafed in vain, For they trampled him down, in their brave career, While our monarch looked on with unmanly fear, Till his crown and his sceptre in dust were laid low, And proud Tenochtitlan had passed to the foe. The last words of this solemn chant died away on the ear, just as the royal barge rounded the little artificial promontory, which the ingenious Karee had constructed, for the double purpose of an arbor and look-out, at one of the angles of her chinampa. Leaning over the brow, and supporting herself by the overhanging branch of a luxuriant myrtle, she dropped a wreath of evergreen upon the head of Tecuichpo, and said-- Oh! child of doom, Thy long sealed destiny is come-- One brief, dark, dreadful night, Then on those blessed eyes Another day shall rise, Fair, glorious, bright, With an unearthly endless light. Thou shall lay down An earthly crown, To win a starry sceptre in the skies At this moment, signals were heard among the distant hills, which, answered and repeated from countless stations along the wild sierras, and reverberated by a thousand echoes as they came, burst upon the quiet valley, like the confused shouts of a mighty host rushing to battle. It fell like a death-knell upon the ear of Montezuma. It announced the arrival, within the mountain wall which encompassed his golden valley, of the dreaded strangers. It heralded their near approach to his capital, and the exposure of all he held dear to their irresistible power--their terrible rapacity. His heart sunk within him. But he had gone too far to retract. It was the act of the gods, not his. Banishing from his mind the impressions of the scenes just passed, he waved his hand to the rowers, and instantly every prow was turned, and the gaily caparisoned, but melancholy, terror-stricken pageant moved rapidly back to the city.