[Whereas earlier commentators have praised the realism of Díaz's descriptions, Gilman posits that the style of The True History of the Conquest of New Spain derives from Romances of Chivalry. In the following essay, he traces the influence of the Amadís de Gaula, arguing that Díaz adapts the familiar style of the romance in order to describe an unfamiliar world.]

One of the fascinations of the Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España for the lover of Spanish literature is to encounter here and there along the slow broad current of the narrative familiar islands of style and literary reference. Here is a chronicle of the extreme and the unknown—extremities of superhuman and inhuman behavior in an orbis novus where unknown nations worship unknown gods with unknown words. How could mediaeval Castilian, a still primarily oral language of inrooted immediacy, be used to tell about such things? Each chronicler of the Indies had to find his own answers to this central question, and if López de Gómara chose the phrasing of oratory and an heroic decorum, Bernal Díaz preferred to approximate the unknown and the extreme to his own day by day living of them. Experience and words are to be as one. This is what he means by adjective so often repeated, "verdadera". It is a promise to bring the story into his own language—"llanamente"—rather than to fabricate a style of forced extremities. But, aside from the inverted pride of this choice (a pride central to the enormous creative and mnemonic effort) what does it do to Bernal Díaz' style? It is not necessary to ask if the choice is really possible, for the Historia verdadera is there before us, a witness to itself. The important question, it seems to me, is a different one: what happens to a language so self-consciously familiar, so determinedly recognizeable, when it must deal with "la conquista de la Nueva España" and all that is therein involved and implied? Many things, of course, happen: distortions of words, uncertainties of terminology, monotonies of phrasing—the inevitable graying and blurring of the marvel. Yet, at the same time, there is also a wonderful self-enrichment as Bernal Díaz' Castilian, faced with this ultimate challenge, explores itself and all that it has been capable of signifying. Just as in the Martín Fierro, it is not so much a question of saying something new, as of the language using a new world to know itself and exploit itself profoundly. Hence, those familiar islands of style so refreshingly and expressively recreated amid the flow of exotic happening, islands which constitute a kind of primordial anthology of Spanish letters.

Here we shall be primarily concerned with Bernal Díaz' best known source of style and reference, the Amadís de Gaula and the Romances of Chivalry of which it is the paladin. Nevertheless, since Bernal Díaz' way with the Amadís can only be understood in terms of the larger problem of how to tell the new with old words, it is better to begin by establishing a context. Let us, therefore, examine briefly some of the other literary reminiscences offering themselves momentarily as solutions to the narrative dilemma. A recurrent device—perhaps less a reminiscence than the independent result of a parallel situation—is the emergence of the chronicler almost as a personage of his chronicle. Like the poets of the "cuaderna vía", Bernal Díaz in his own voice continually directs the course of events: "Dejemos esto y digamos cómo el capitán les dió muy buena respuesta …" or again, a page further on, "No sé yo para qué lo traigo tanto a la memoria sino que, en las cosas de la guerra, por fuerza hemos de hacer relación dello". On one occasion we are even more touchingly reminded of the voice of Berceo complaining of the gathering darkness. Here the aged writer contrasts the frailty of his 84 years with the agility of the conquistador he had been:

Y un día … vimos venir por la playa cinco indios … y con alegres rostros nos hicieron reverencia a su manera, y por señas nos dijeron que los llevásemos al real. Yo dije a mi compañero que se quedase … e yo iría con ellos, que en aquella sazón no me pesaban los pies como agora que soy viejo.

Here Bernal Díaz not only displays an age-old "integralismo" but also uses it as Berceo had used it (to borrow for a second time words from Castro) "para garantizar la autenticidad de lo narrado". Past and present experience are here and elsewhere kept in balance, in order that they may reinforce each other, in order that the marvellous may be credible. As we read of wonders long past, the voiced presence of the chronicler directing his story and recalling his youth insures our belief. This naiveté has a hidden function.

A different way of achieving the same end is the approximation of remembered experience, not with the writer's present, but with the eternal realm of proverbs. [Gilman adds, "Bernal Díaz' great and characteristically Spanish talent was for the continual humanization and vivification of his prose, whether by self-reference, by voiced proverbs with all their oral implication, or by the other means here suggested".] For Bernal Díaz can and does wield the condensed wisdom of the language with as much malice as Fernando de Rojas or Cervantes. Here, he is engaged in explaining how Cortés was urged by his men to disregard the instructions of the governor of Cuba, Diego Velásquez, and to set out as a conquistador on his own:

Por manera que Cortés lo aceptó, y aunque se hecía mucho de rogar y, como dice el refrán, tú me lo ruegas y yo me lo quiero, y fué con condíción que le hiciésemos justicia mayor y capitán general….

There is something here of rough military humor, but the ultimate purpose is not merely to be funny. Rather, by inserting the proverb with such apparent carelessness, Bernal Díaz presents Cortés' self-interest and Macchiavellian virtú for our immediate recognition. The suggested role of an ostensibly reluctant girl surrounded by eager suitors and the naively self-centered eagerness of the second dative ("yo me lo quiero") surpass mere verisimilitude of motive and behavior in favor of direct intuition. The flesh and blood authenticity of this otherwise incredible hero is not only "guaranteed" but made almost palpable.

Of a more literary nature and perhaps more self-consciously composed are moments in which echoes from 15th century biography and La Celestina are clearly audible. It is as if the chronicler had paused to grasp in his memory a profile, a situation, a relationship. The flow of happening comes to a halt, and, there, within a frame of familiar style, we find, for example, the Emperor Montezuma:

Era el gran Montezuma de edad de hasta cuarenta años y de buena estatura e bien proporcionado e cenceño, e pocas carnes, y la color ni muy moreno, sino propia color e matiz de indio, y traía los cabellos no muy largos, sino cuanto le cubrían las orejas, e pocas barbas prietas e bien puestas e ralas, y el rostro algo largo y alegre, e los ojos de buena manera, e mostraba en su persona en el mirar, por un cabo amor e cuando era menester graveded; era muy polido e limpio, bañábase cada diá una vez a la tarde….

Montezuma up to this moment of first meeting has been a distant, mysterious figure, the goal of perilous journeying: "nuestra demanda y apellido fué ver al Montezuma". But now he is brought close up. He is made known feature by feature, expression by expression, habit by habit, as Bernal Díaz adapts for his own purposes the descriptive techniques of a Pérez de Guzmán or a Pulgar. It is not so much a matter of a source or an influence (notions far too crude for such tenuous reminiscence) as of using a ready-made style with built-in expectations and connotations to achieve a well-timed metamorphosis, the metamorphosis of Montezuma from legend to person. A sense of narrative variation and of timing is one of the charms of the Historia verdadera.

An immensely difficult problem for Bernal Díaz must have been the conversations of the Indians among themselves. From his own experience he was acutely aware of the alien quality not only of their words but of the very nature of their interpersonal relationships. But, at the same time, neither he nor any one else in his century possessed narrative tools capable of dealing with a culture different at the root. Bernal Díaz' solution is always faithfulness to his own point of view, but when what he has to say makes this impossible, instead of inventing rhetorical orations, he tries as well as he can to imagine on his own terms what might have been said. And he does so with due hesitancy and apology: "les hizo Maseecasi … un razonamiento, casi que fué desta manera según después se entendió, aunque no las palabras formales: 'Hermanos y amigos nuestros …'". On at least one occasion, however, the nature of the conversation inspires him to give a Celestinesque turn to his rendition. It is night; the conquistadores are encamped in Cholula on their way to the capital; the air is clouded with suspicion; an old Indian woman hoping to arrange an advantageous marriage for her son with doña Marina, draws her apart and hints at a conspiracy within the town; doña Marina answers trying to draw her out:

¡Oh, madre, qué mucho tengo que agradeceros! Eso que decís, yo me fuera agora con vos, pero no tengo aquí de quien me fiar mis mantas y joyas de oro, ques mucho; por vuestra vida, madre, que aguardéis un poco vos y vuestro hijo, y esta noche nos iremos que ahora ya veis que estos teules están velando, y sentirnos han.

The fact of doña Marina's dissimulation as well as the old woman's crafty desire to find a rich wife for her son has evidently reminded Bernal Díaz of feminine conversation in La Celestina. He recreates the style of its dialogue, however, not only because of its decorum but also (just as for the biographical profile of Montezuma) to hold the situation still for our better recognition. The atmosphere of uncertainty and intrigue which surrounded the Spaniards in the unknown city is rendered by calculated stylistic artificiality. Surely, as Bernal Díaz knew, neither doña Marina nor the old woman spoke in this way, but as Bernal Díaz also knew, his problem was not just to translate words. He had to find ways to translate not just meaning but the vital situation, itself.

The "romancero" is another source for reference and style, but it is used in a somewhat different way. On at least two occasions, ballad fragments are repeated, not by Bernal Díaz, but by the other companions of Cortés who are brought back to life and speech on his pages. And on both occasions the inference is that the ballad is somehow tiresome, impertinent in its oral over-familiarity. These verses are so well known that there is something of Cervantine irony in their rapprochement to the new reality of America. Menéndez Pidal [in Los romances de América] describes the first instance in this way:

Navegando Harnán Cortés, en 1519, la costa de Méjico, para ir a San Juan de Ulúa, los que ya conocían la tierra iban mostrándole la Rambla, las muy altas sierras nevadas, el río de Albarado donde entré Pedro de Albarado, el río de Banderas …, la isla de Sacrificios, donde hallaron los altares y los indios sacrificados cuando lo de Grijalva; y así se entretenían, hasta que arribaron a San Juan. A alguien le parecían impertinentes aquellos recuerdos pasados y tan perder el tiempo como recitar el romance de Calaínos. "Acuérdome—dice Bernal Díaz del Castillo—que llegó un caballero que se decía Alonso Hernández Puertocarrero, y dijo a Cortés: 'Paréceme, señor, que os han venido diciendo estos caballeros que han venido otras dos veces a esta tierra:

Cata Francia, Montesinos, cata París la ciudad,
cata las aguas del Duero do van a dar a la mar;

yo digo que miréis las tierras ricas, y sabeos bien gobernar'. Luego Cortés bien entendió a qué fin fueron aquellas palabras dichas y respondió:

'Dénos Dios ventura en armas como al paladín Roldán,

que en lo demás, teniendo a vuestra merced y a otros caballeros por señores, bien me sabré entender'".

Yet, at the same time that the ballad seems to bring a slight smile to the lips of the speakers, it also manages to touch the center of Bernal Díaz' dilemma: confrontation with a reality that is new and overwhelming. The only other traditional ballad so remembered is that recited two decades before by Sempronio (with comparable irony) as the saddest song he knew:

Mira Nero de Tarpeya a Roma cómo se ardía.

Again the ballad chosen describes the act of looking at something extraordinary or marvellous—and so helps to communicate the vital situation of the conquistador.

Thus it is that Cortés' soldiers actually invent a new ballad to portray him beholding México for the first time since "la noche triste":

… digamos como Cortés y todos nosotros estábamos mirando desde Tacuba el gran cu de Huichilobos y el Tatelulco y los aposentos donde solíamos estar, y mirábamos toda la ciudad y los puentes y calzadas por donde salimos huyendo; y en este instante sospiró Cortés con una muy gran tristeza, muy mayor que la que antes traía, por los hombres que le mataron antes que en el alto cu subiese, y desde entonces dijeron un cantar o romance:

En Tacuba está Cortés con su escuadrón esforzado,
triste estaba y muy penoso, triste y con gran cuidado,
una mano en la mejilla y la otra en el costado….

Here the elements of stopped motion and of pictorial presence are emphatic. The fragment—although introduced in a different way—has exactly the same narrative function as the reminiscence of a past style. If a pen portrait is guided by the tradition of the Generaciones y semblanzas and a scene of nocturnal whispering and intrigue is held together with Celestinesque dialogue, certain moments of sheer visual confrontation are caught for us through the "romancero". The difference, however, is that the ballad is presented as the association of someone directly involved in the experience—an association recalled by Bernal Díaz for his own purposes: communication.

Of all the literary references in the Historia verdadera, readers in our time have been most charmed by those from the Romances of Chivalry, particularly the Amadís de Gaula. Unlike López de Gómara who, according to Ramón Iglesia [in Cronistas e Historiadores], deplored "las creencias fabulosas de los conquistadores", Bernal Díaz lived within such "creencias", within the realm of adventure, and reference to Amadís leads the reader into it along with him. The blind [William] Prescott [in his History of the Conquest of Mexico, 1845] sees for us all when with entranced exclamation he comments on one passage:

All round the margin, and occasionally far in the lake, they beheld little towns and villages, which, half concealed by the foliage, and gathered in white clusters around the shore, looked in the distance like companies of white swans riding quietly on the waves. A scene so new and wonderful filled their rude hearts with amazement. It seemed like enchantment; and they could find nothing to compare it with, but the magical pictures in the "Amadís de Gaula". Few pictures, indeed, in that or any other legend of chivalry, could surpass the realities of their own experience. The life of the adventurer in the New World was romance put into action. What wonder, then, if the Spaniard of that day, feeding his imagination with dreams of enchantment at home, and with its realities abroad, should have displayed a Quixotic enthusiasm,—a romantic exaltation of character, not to be comprehended by the colder spirits of other lands!

Prescott, the "cold spirited" fireside Romantic, is not alone in his enthusiasm. A writer of antithetical sensibility to his, Alfonso Reyes, uses the same passage from Bernal Díaz as an epigraph to his exquisitely etched Visión de Anáhuac. And along with these two, Irving Leonard, Anderson Imbert, Américo Castro, and many others have been stimulated by the same rapprochement of fictional to historical adventure to relive the past. According to Fernando Benítez [in La ruta de Hernan Cortes], even Bernal Díaz himself returned over the bridge of this chivalresque comparison to "la primera impresión, la imborrable":

El veterano que se ha lanzado a la búsqueda del tiempo perdido, recuerda cincuenta años después, en su modesta casa de Guatemala, la imagen de la ciudad reflejándose en sus lagos. Los templos, los palacios, el pardo caserío, han surgido nuevamente de las aguas. El antiguo soldado no traza esta vez el cuadro de Tenochtitlán con tres o cuatro certeros brochazos realistas, según ha sido su costumbre en Cempoala, Tlaxcala o Cholula. Bernal, ahora, apunta una sugerencia rara en él: el sueño y Amadís de Gaula. Es decir, dos sueños.

Admitting the fascination, the almost Quixotic incitement to the imagination, of the Amadís de Gaula encountered in such circumstances, it is misleading to emphasize it so uniquely. Let us for our part try to see it in the context of the whole—that is to say, of the continuing narrative problem which led to other varieties of literary and stylistic reminiscence. Bernal Díaz' recourse to the Amadís is clearly an effort to approximate the known to the unknown, the new world to familiar language and experience. As such it is comparable to the use of proverbs, to the insertion of ballad fragments, and to the other examples here assembled. So understood, we may expect to find the Romances of Chivalry referred to in two distinct ways: first, like the ballads, as the spontaneous associations of the conquistadores, themselves (associations used, as it were, later by the chronicler for his own ends); and, second, like La Celestina, as a model for style at certain crucial moments. That is to say, we expect to find in the Amadís something more than a call to adventure; we expect to find its function within the narrative.

Examples of the second variety—the unacknowledged use of chivalresque style—abound. Bernal Díaz, the chronicler, with great frequency in his description depends on that naive use of the superlative so characteristic of the Romances of Chivalry:

… en lo más alto de todo el cu estaba otra concavidad muy ricamente labrada la madera della, y estaba otro bulto como de medio hombre y medio lagarto, todo lleno de piedras ricas y la mitad dál enmantado. Este decían que el cuerpo dál estaba lleno de todas las semillas que había en toda la tierra, y decían que era el dios de las sementeras y frutas; no se me acuerda el nombre, y todo estaba lleno de sangre, así paredes como altar, y era tanto el hedor que no víamos la hora de salirnos afuera. Y allí tenía un atambor muy grande en demasía, que cuando le tañían el sonido dél era tan triste y de tal manera como dicen estrumento de los infiernos, y más de dos leguas de allí se oía; decían que los cueros de aquel atambor eran de sierpes muy grandes. E en aquella placeta tenían tantas cosas muy diabólicas de ver, de bocinas y trompetillas y navajones, y muchos corazones de indios que habían quemado, con que sahumaron a aquellos sus ídolos, y todo cuajado de sangre.

Here the breakdown of the whole into successive declarations of experience and the augmentation of each declaration to the maximum ("muy ricamente labrada", "todo lleno de piedras ricas", "tambor muy grande en demasía", "tanto el hedor que …", "el sonido tan triste", etc.) has the unique purpose of stimulating wonder. Just as in the Amadís and so many of its successors, the reader must banish all sophistication and enter the adventure. His experience as a reader of Romances is called upon, in order that he may assimilate in his imagination the explicit wonder of what is told. Because he is used to this style, he knows already how to convert the superlatives and explanations into a feeling of his own. The style of the Amadís, in other words, is one more means of stopping the past and sharing the new world. And precisely because the Historia verdadera is not a novel, because it is so authentically "verdadera", these primitive novelistic techniques for converting a narrative into an experience are all the more effective. A style which in its native habitat, Romances of Chivalry, has been flat and unconvincing to every generation of readers since Cervantes is here deeply moving. It is a way of letting us do what we want to do: to hear for ourselves with wondering dread the rolling of the serpent drum.

Despite the extreme importance of the style of the Amadís to Bernal Díaz' description, it is the first va riety of literary reference—through the spontaneous associations of the conquistadores themselves—that so teased the imaginations of Prescott, Alfonso Reyes, and the others. All of them refer to one climatic passage, surely the best known in the entire Historia Verdadera, that which recalls the last day of journeying to México and the first view of the city in the lake:

Y acabada la plática, luego nos partimos, e como habían venido aquellos caciques que dicho tengo, traían mucha gente consigo y de otros muchos pueblos que están en aquella comarca, que salían a vernos. Todos los caminos estaban llenos dellas (que no podíamos andar, y los mismos caciques decían a sus vasallos que hiciesen lugar, e que mirasen que éramos teules, que si no hacian lugar nos enojaríamos con ellos. Y por estas palabras que les decían nos desembarazaron el camino e fuimos a dormir a otro pueblo que está poblado en la laguna, que me parece que se dice Mezquiqui, que después se puso nombre Venezuela, y tenía tantas torres y grandes cues que blanqueaban, y el cacique dél e principales nos hicieron mucha honra, y dieron a Cortés un presente de oro e mantas ricas, que valdría el oro cuatrocientos pesos; y nuestro Cortés les dió muchas gracias por ello. Allí se les declaró cosas tocantes a nuestra santa fe, como hacíamos en todos los pueblos por donde veníamos, y, según paresció, aquellos de aquel pueblo estaban muy mal con Montezuma, de muchos agravios que les había hecho, y se quejaron dél. Y Cortés les dijo que pronto se remediaría, y que agora llegaríamos a Méjico, si Dios fuese servido, y entendería en todo). Y otro día por la mañana llegamos a la calzada ancha y vamos camino de Estapalapa. Y desque vimos tantas ciudades y villas pobladas en el agua, y en tierra firme otras grandes poblazones, y aquella calzada tan derecha y por nivel cómo iba a Méjico, nos quedamos admirados, y decíamos que parescía a las cosas de encantamiento que cuentan en el libro de Amadís, por las grandes torres y cues y edificios que tenían dentro en el agua, y todos de calicanto, y aún algunos de nuestros soldados decían que si aquello que vían, si era entre sueños, y no es de maravillar que yo lo escriba aquí desta manera, porque hay mucho que ponderar en ello que no sé cómo lo cuente: ver cosas nunca oídas, ni vistas, ni aun soñadas, como víamos.

I have given such lengthy context to the reminiscence of the Amadís (including in parentheses sentences crossed out by Bernal Díaz, himself) for three reasons. In the first place, we are helped thereby to appreciate the two-fold nature of the gathering marvel. Not only do stout Cortés and all his men gaze in wild surmise at the city, but they, themselves, as wizard-like "teules", are objects of wonder. They feel encased in wonder—almost as if they themselves were characters in a Romance of Chivalry being read by an Indian public. In the second place, we are reminded of the continuing chivalresque vocation and rationalization which comes to the surface in the explicit reference. The conquistadores remember the Amadís because, as has often been pointed out, their impetus and vocation—Castro would say, their "incitación"—are of the same stuff as Don Quijote's. In the words of Ramón Iglesia, "la sombra de los libros de caballería se proyecta sobre la empresa de los conquistadores". Finally, and most important of all, we are led to notice the approximation of the Amadís reference to the problem of language: "porque hay mucho que ponderar en ello que no sé cómo lo cuente: ver cosas nunca oídas, ni vistas, ni aun soñadas, como víamos". The Amadís, in other words, like Menéndez Pidal's snatches of balladry, is something more than a spontaneous association of those who first saw the extraordinary scene. For the aged chronicler it was a convenient way of telling the reader about it, a kind of literary shorthand. On this point we must be both precise and repetitive. Not only does the reference express (particularly to latter-day readers) the breathless wonder of first encounter; not only does it reflect a sense of self as knight-errant; but also it is a way of solving the problem of communication. That is to say, it is a way of helping the reader to see what was seen.

What, then, was it that they saw? The actual things seen are listed by Bernal Díaz in the sentences surrounding the Amadís invocation: "ciudades y villas pobladas en el agua", "aquella calzada tan derecha y por nivel cómo iba a Méjico", "grandes torres y cues y edificios que tenían dentro en el agua, y todos de calicanto". This bare naming is, of course, insufficient for the narrator's purpose. All these things must be gathered into a scene, held for a moment before the reader in terms of some sort of familiar composition. And in the Amadís de Gaula, remembered by his comrades, Bernal Díaz found exactly what he needed:

Y al tercer día … partieron de allí, y fueron su camino y al quinto día halláronse cerca de un castillo muy fuerte que estaba sobre un agua salada y el castillo había nombre Bradoid, y era el más hermoso que había en toda aquella tierra y era asentado en una alta peña y de la una parte corría aquel agua y de la otra había un gran tremedal, y de la parte del agua no se podia entrar sino por barca y de contra el tremedal había una calzada tan ancha que podía ir una carreta y otra venir, mas a la entrada del tremedal había una puente estrecha y era echadiza y cuando la alzaban quedaba el agua muy honda, y a la entrada de la puente estaban dos olmos altos y el gigante y Galaor vieron debajo de ellos dos doncellas y un escudero….

The Amadis in those days was not, as it is for us, a more or less unread text, a mere title suggestive of chivalric ideals and hazy adventures. It was rather, as it was for its most celebrated reader, intensely perused and intensely present, sharply visual. Hence, its suitability to this particular moment. The first long-awaited sight of lake, and city—after the unsatisfactory descriptions of the Tlaxcalans and the distant glimpse that Diego de Ordaz and his comrades had of it from the summit of Popocatepetl—is the apogee of marvel and so of memory, visual memory: "agora que lo estoy escribiendo se me representa todo delante de mis ojos como si ayer fuera cuando esto pasó." How fitting that the vividly familiar scene from amadís (familiar because oft-read and oft-imagined) should serve to shape and to communicate the vivid alienness of the scene that emerges from Bernal Díaz' memory! In a passage in which the problem of communication comes to climax, Bernal Díaz' talent for timing and literary reference meets the challenge. Here as elsewhere, the new and old have merged to a single image.

Thus, in a very real way, this one passage from the Historia verdadera—a passage fascinating to generations of vicarious adventurers—is representative of all of American literature. The New World must be given in translation; yet in the very act of translation there can be linguistic salvation, recreation of the old in such a way that it means more than it ever meant before. Language and tradition, both English and Spanish, are submitted in America to the proof of adventure. As for Bernal Díaz, it was his honor to have achieved this adventure of the pen with even more glory than that of the sword so long before. Once the Amadís had enabled him to hold forever on paper the first marvel of discovery, he goes on with undiminished literary command to translate for us his experience of the whole of the city: plazas, buildings, canals, commerce, palaces, gardens, and all the rest. The chivalresque superlative can carry it all over; indeed, it learns to carry more than any writer of an authentic "libro de caballerías" ever thought to ask of it. The final view, strangely comparable to that of Valencia seen by Jimena and her daughters from the Alcázar, is given when Cortés and his men follow Montezuma up the great temple pyramid. Seen from above rather than from afar, the resonance of Urganda la desconocida and the castle of Bradoid is nonetheless still audible. For Bernal Díaz goes on translating an architecture alien in shape and function into the turrets and crenelations of medieval fancy. Yet, unlike the castle-inns of don Quijote, there is here neither humorous misrepresentation nor wilful failure to portray Aztec reality. Instead, I would maintain, the view from the temple is one of the most moving and authentically communicative passages ever written in Spanish:

Y luego [Montezuma] le tomó [a Cortés] por la mano y le dijo que mirase su gran ciudad y todas las más ciudades que había dentro en el agua, e otros muchos pueblos alrededor de la misma laguna en tierra, y que si no había visto muy bien su gran plaza, que desde allí la podría ver muy mejor, e ansí lo estuvimos mirando, porque desde aquel grande y maldito templo estaba tan alto que todo lo señoreaba muy bien; y de allí vimos las tres calzadas que entran en Méjico, ques la de istapalapa, que fué por la que entramos cuatro días hacía, y la de Tacuba, que fué por donde después salimos huyendo la noche de nuestro gran desbarate, cuando Cuedlavaca, nuevo señor, nos echó de la ciudad, como adelante diremos, y la de Tepeaquilla. Y víamos el aguq dulce que venía de Chapultepec, de que se proveía la ciudad, y en aquellas tres calzadas, las puentes que tenían hechas de trecho a trecho, por donde entraba y salía el agua de la laguna de una parte a otra; e víamos en aquella gran laguna tanta multitud de canoas, unas que venían con bastimentos e otras que volvían con cargas y mercaderías; e víamos que cada casa de aquella gran ciudad, y de todas las más ciudades questaban pobladas en el agua, de casa a casa no se pasaba sino por unas puentes levadizas que tenían hechas de madera, o en canoas; y víamos en aquellas ciudades cues e adoratorios a manera de torres e fortalezas, e todas blanqueando, que era cosa de admiración, y las casas de azoteas, y en las calzadas otras torrecillas e adoratorios que eran como fortalezas. Y después de bien mirado y considerado todo lo que habíamos visto, tornamos a ver la gran plaza y la multitud de gente que en ella había, unos comprando y otros vendiendo, que solamente el rumor y zumbido de las voces y palabras que allí había sonaba más que de una legua….