“As the approaches to the city were singular, its construction was remarkable. Not only the temples of their gods, but the houses belonging to the monarch, and to persons of distinction, were of such dimensions, that, in comparison with any other buildings which had been hitherto discovered in America, they might be termed magnificent. The habitations of the common people were mean, resembling the huts of other Indians. But they were all placed in a regular manner, on the banks of the canals which passed through the city in some of its districts, or in the sides of the streets which intersected it in other quarters. “In several places were large openings or squares, one of which, allotted for the great market, is said to have been so spacious that forty or fifty thousand persons carried on traffic there. In this city, the pride of the New World, and the noblest monument of the industry and art of man, the Spaniards reckon that there were at least sixty thousand inhabitants.” The explanation given to the Spaniards by the King of Mexico of his conduct in receiving them in the manner he did—humbling himself in the presence of his European visitors—proves that the founders of the Mexican Empire were white men, similar to the Spaniards; and, in firm belief in the promise of the great chief—that at some future time his descendants would visit the Mexicans—the king made up his mind to deliver the empire into the hands of Cortes, as the representative of that chief. So that, even when Montezuma was kept a prisoner, and ill-treated by these Spaniards, he submitted with the utmost humility to every indignity without offering the slightest opposition. He only discovered his mistake regarding the identity of these men when Cortes tried to impose the forms of the Roman Catholic religion, and placed the image of the Virgin Mary in their great temple in Mexico. Then, and only then, did he resent, and allow the Mexican nobles to assert their liberty, and to take up arms against their cruel invaders, who had broken every international law, and usurped the power of their kingdom. The cruelty and the superstition of the Spaniards in New Spain are well known throughout the civilized world, so that it is needless to recount them here. These usurpers did all in their power to destroy every monument of the ancient Mexicans, under the ignorant impression that every building was a heathen temple, and every statue the image of a pagan god, to whom prayers and sacrifices were offered. They even built churches on the tops of some of the large Pyramids, thinking that these were temples, erected for the performance of idolatrous worship! The inspired Law-giver, after establishing a firm government, with good laws and regulations for its continuance, left a colony in power over the conquered natives of the soil, and, departing from Mexico, landed on the shores of the southern continent of America, where he founded the extensive Empire of Peru.