Produced by Julia Miller, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) THE INFIDEL; OR, THE FALL OF MEXICO. A ROMANCE. BY THE AUTHOR OF "CALAVAR." SECOND EDITION. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. Philadelphia: CAREY, LEA & BLANCHARD. 1835. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1835, by CAREY, LEA & BLANCHARD, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. PHILADELPHIA C. SHERMAN & CO. PRINTERS, NO. 19 ST. JAMES STREET. --Un esforcado soldado, que se dezia _Lerma_--Se fue entre los Indios como aburrido de temor del mismo Cortes, a quien avia ayudado a salvar la vida, por ciertas cosas de enojo que Cortes contra el tuvo, que aqui no declaro por su honor: nunca mas supimos del vivo, ni muerto, mala suspecha tuvimos. BERNAL DIAZ DEL CASTILLO--_Hist. Verd de la Conquista_. No hay mal que por bien no venga, Dicen adagios vulgares. CALPERON--_La Dama Duende_. THE INFIDEL. CHAPTER I. The traveller, who wanders at the present day along the northern and eastern borders of the Lake of Tezcuco, searches in vain for those monuments of aboriginal grandeur, which surrounded it in the age of Montezuma. The lake itself, which not so much from the saltness of its flood as from the vastness of its expanse, was called by Cortes the Sea of Anahuac, is no longer worthy of the name. The labours of that unhappy race of men, whose bondage the famous Conquistador cemented in the blood of their forefathers, have conducted, through the bowels of a mountain, the waters of its great tributaries, the pools of San Cristobal and Zumpango; and these, rushing down the channel of the Tula, or river of Montezuma, and mingled with the surges of the great Gulf, support fleets of modern argosies, instead of piraguas and chinampas, and expend upon foundering ships-of-war the wrath, which, in their ancient beds, was wasted upon reeds and bulrushes. With the waters, which rippled through their streets, have vanished the numberless towns and cities, that once beautified the margin of the Alpine sea; the towers have fallen, the lofty pyramids melted into earth or air, and the palaces and tombs of kings will be looked for in vain, under tangled copses of thistle and prickly-pear.