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In passing the spot of the recent skirmish, they found that nine horses and two men had been killed, the latter unintentionally, besides the rifleman of their own party. Many other horses were lying wounded, in the struggles of death, and several of their riders were seated on the ground, disabled by bruises or dislocations. Huertis' men buried their comrades in a grave hastily dug with the spears which lay around him, while the Iximayas laid their dead and wounded upon horses, to be conveyed to a village on the plain. The former, it was found, were consumed there the next day, in funereal fires, with idolatrous rites; and it was observed by the travellers that the native soldiers regarded their dead with emotions of extreme sensibility, and almost feminine grief, like men wholly unaccustomed to scenes of violent death. But Velasquez remarks, that the strongest emotion evinced by the young chief, throughout their intercourse, was when he heard the word "Iximaya," in interpreting for Huertis. He then seemed to be smitten and subdued, by blank despair, as if he felt that the city and its location were already familiarly known to the foreign world.

As already intimated, the distance to the city was about six miles. The expedition found the road to it bordered, on either side, as far as the eye could reach, with a profuse and valuable vegetation, the result of evidently assiduous and skilful culture. Indigo, corn, oats, a curious five-eared wheat, gourds, pine-apples esculent roots, pulse, flax, and hemp, the white as well as the crimson cotton, vineyards, and fruit orchards, grew luxuriantly in large, regularly divided fields, which were now ripe for the harvest. The villages, large and populous, were mostly composed of flat-roofed dwellings with broad overhanging eaves or architraves, supported by heavy columns, often filletted over spiral flutings, in the Egyptian style, and generally terminating in foliaged capitals, of the same character. None of the houses were mean, while many were superb; and of the mosque-like larger buildings, which occasionally appeared, and which were supposed to be rural temples, some were grand and imposing. A profusion of bold sculpture, was the prevailing characteristic, and perhaps defect, of all. The inhabitants, who thronged the wayside in great numbers, appeared excited with surprise and exultation, on beholding the large company of strangers apparently in the custody of their military, while the disarmed condition of the latter, and the bodies of the slain, were a mystery they could not explain. Many of the husbandmen were observed to be in possession of bows and arrows, and some of the women held rusty spears. The predominant costume of both sexes was a pale blue tunic, gathered in at the breast and descending to the knee, with reticulated buskins, of red cord, covering the calf of the leg. The women, with few exceptions, were of fine form, and the highest order of Indian beauty, with an extraordinary affluence of black hair, tastefully disposed, and decorated with plumes and flowers. At the village where the dead and wounded were left, with their relatives and friends, doleful lamentations wore heard, until the expedition approached the city.

The walls of this metropolis were sixty feet high, sloping inward from the foundation, surmounted by a parapet which overhung in a concave curve and rested upon a plain moulding. They were evidently a massive work of a remote period, for although constructed of large blocks of granitic stone, white and glittering in the sun, passing ages had corroded rough crevices between the layers, and the once perfect cornices had become indented by the tooth of time. The sculptured annals of the city recorded them an antiquity of four thousand years. They formed a parallelogram four miles long and three in width, thus inclosing an area of nearly twelve square miles, and they breasted the cardinal points of the horizon with a single gate, or propylon, midway on every side. On approaching the eastern gate, the travellers discovered that the foundations of the walls were laid in a deep foss or moat a hundred feet wide, nearly full to its brink and abounding with water-fowl. It was replenished from the mountains, and discharged its surplus waters into the lakes of the valley. It was to be crossed by a draw-bridge now raised over the gate, and the parapet was thronged with the populace to behold the entrance of so large a number of strangers for whom there was no return.

At a signal from the young chief, the bridge slowly descended and the cavalcade passed over; but the folding gates, which were composed of blocks of stone curiously dovetailed together, and which revolved upon hinges of the same material by a ball and socket contrivance above and below, were not yet opened, and the party were detained on the bridge. A small oval orifice only appeared, less than a human face, and a ear was applied there to receive an expected word in a whisper. This complied with, the ponderous gates unfolded, and a vista of solemn magnificence was presented to the view. It was a vista at once of colossal statues and trees, interminable in perspective and extending, as it was found, the whole length of the city to its western gate. Incredible as it may be, until we reflect upon the ancient statuary of the eastern world, Velasquez reports each and all of these monuments as being exactly of the height of the city wall, that is, sixty feet, and all possessing the proportions of the human figure. He adds, what is equally marvelous, that no two of them were precisely alike in countenance, and very few in their sculptural costume. There was some distinctive emblem upon each, and he was informed that they were statues of the ancient kings of Assyria, from before the foundation of Babylon, and of their descendants in the Aztec empires of this continent. They stood sixty feet apart, with a smaller monument of some mythological animal between each, and were said to number one hundred and fifteen, on each side of the avenue they formed, which was one hundred and twenty feet in width. A similar but shorter avenue, it appears, crossed the city from north to south, having a proportional number of such monuments through its entire extent; and these two grand avenues ran through wide areas of green sward richly grouped with lofty trees. But the translator finds himself trespassing upon forbidden ground and must forbear.