CHAPTER XIII.
CEMPOALLA TO TLASCALA.
THE road to Cempoalla lay through luxuriant groves of cocoa and palm trees, and then amid beautiful meadows alive with butterflies and birds. Flowering vines in a gay tangle clambered aloft, festooning the trees and loading the air with palm and spicery. As the Spaniards passed they saw on the face of nature one of those cruel blots of war—the blackened ruins of a little hamlet which had just been burned. Cempoalla was only twelve miles from their new campground, and was a city surrounded by well-kept gardens and orchards.
In one of the suburban villages through which they passed the Spaniards were met by twenty of the leading men of Cempoalla, who came bringing refreshments from their chief. Here the road was lined with crowds eager to see the strange creatures who seemed to these simple folk to have dropped among them from the moon. The men wore large mantles; the women were modestly dressed in long white or parti-colored cotton robes reaching from neck to ankle. They brought wreaths of wild flowers to hang about the horses' necks and to strew in the path, as was their custom when welcoming home their own braves. Both men and women were very much bejeweled. Necks and noses, ears, lips,
