The figure of Alvarado stood up against the grey sky alone--a moment--and then he measured the breach with his eye. Planting his lance on the wreckage in the waters of the breach, after the manner of a leaping-pole, the heroic Spaniard, collecting his energies, leapt forward, and passed the chasm at a bound. The Aztecs paused in admiration of this feat of the "Son of the Sun," as they had named Alvarado, from his fair hair and ruddy countenance. To-day we may still see the place where this part of the causeway lay, known as the _Puente de Alvarado_. Away off the causeway into the grey dawn passed the remnant of the routed Spanish Army, wounded, bleeding, starving, their comrades gone, some to death, some to the dreadful sacrifices of the Mexican priests, where their hearts would be torn living from their breasts, and annihilation threatening all. Baggage and artillery were gone, not a carbine was left, and Cortes, seating himself upon the steps of a ruined temple on the shore, wept bitter tears of sorrow for the loss of his comrades and his vanished fortunes. So ended the _Noche Triste_, and to this day may be seen an ancient tree under which it is said Cortes wept. The Spaniards, however, were not of such stuff as easily gives in to difficulty and disaster. Had it been otherwise, Mexico to-day might have had a different destiny. It might have developed a purely aboriginal or Indian state. But fate seems not to have willed it that any such nation should exist in the New World. Cortes and the remnant of his army--there was no other course for them--returned to their Tlascalan allies, fighting their way even here, however, for after passing the ancient pyramid of Teotihuacan, even then standing ruined and desolate a few miles north of the city--monument of the shadowy Toltecs, who preceded the Aztec hegemony, and which, restored by the Mexican Government under President Diaz, is an object of great interest to the traveller--they looked down on the Plain of Otumba, and beheld the forces of the Otomies drawn up in battle array against them. These warriors wore armour of thick quilted cotton, which formed a considerable protection against the rude weapons of the country, and the Spaniards were now without firearms. They were so numerous that, it is recorded, the plain "looked as if it were covered with snow," from the white armour. But the Christians routed them, and thus the Battle of Otumba was one of the turning-points in New World history, as elsewhere remarked.