The fire of artillery and
musketry blazed without intermission along the several causeways,
belching forth volumes of sulphurous smoke, that, rolling heavily over
the waters, settled dark around the Indian city, and hid it from the
surrounding country. The brigantines thundered, at the same time. on
the flanks of the columns, which, after some ineffectual efforts to
maintain themselves, rolled back in wild confusion, till their
impotent fury died away in sullen murmurs within the capital.
Cortes now steadily pursued the plan he had laid down for the
devastation of the city. Day after day the several armies entered by
their respective quarters; Sandoval probably directing his
operations against the north-eastern district. The buildings made of
the porous tetzontli, though generally low, were so massy and
extensive, and the canals were so numerous, that their progress was
necessarily slow. They, however, gathered fresh accessions of strength
every day from the numbers who flocked to the camp from the
surrounding country, and who joined in the work of destruction with
a hearty good will, which showed their eagerness to break the detested
yoke of the Aztecs. The latter raged with impotent anger as they
beheld their lordly edifices, their temples, all they had been
accustomed to venerate, thus ruthlessly swept away; their canals,
constructed with so much labour, and what to them seemed science,
filled up with rubbish; their flourishing city, in short, turned
into a desert, over which the insulting foe now rode triumphant.
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