for sacrifice and slaves. The houses in which he dwelt were stored with riches which he had seized by force. In short, all the wealth of the country was in his hands. Of his capital city and its causeways, its houses and bridges, they told us as we had already heard; and also of an aqueduct carrying sweet water from springs of Chapultepec, about two miles from the town, and reaching a place in the city from which porters carried it in canoes and sold it to the people.
These two caciques told also about the arms of the Mexicans—two-pronged lances which go through any cuirass; bows and arrows, with which they are excellent shot; javelins [1] with flint edges as sharp as knives; and stone-edged, two-handed swords; and rounded stones for which they had many slingers.
Because we had heard about all the caciques were telling, we changed the subject to another more profound, and the caciques told of a tradition they had from their forefathers—how one of their gods, to whom they paid great honors, had told them that in a time to come, from the direction of the rising of the sun, a people should come and rule over them. If we were these people, the kind old caciques said,
- ↑ The main weapon of Mexico, "a short spear made of hard and elastic canewood, whose point, shaped after the manner of the well-known arrow-head, was mostly of flint, of obsidian, and perhaps occasionally of copper." A. F. A. Bandelier.
