two worlds lived side by side in mutual ignorance, with no
more than an arm of the sea between them.

Les peuples tout enfants à peine se Découvrent
Par-dessus les buissons Nés pendant leur sommeil.

These lines of de Vigny come to mind when we think of
this strange marking time in history. In Europe the modern
world was beginning to break out of its enclosing mould: in
this same 1507, when the Mexicans once more 'bound the
years', lighting the new fire on the summit of the Uixachtecatl,
Luther was ordained priest. One year before Leonardo da
Vinci had painted the Gioconda, and Bramante had begun
Saint Peter's at Rome. France was engaged in her great
Italian wars; and in Florence, Niccoló Machiavelli was the
secretary of state for the militia. Spain had beaten the
Moors of Granada and so had won back the last of her
conquered territory; and an irresistible expansion urged the
Spanish caravels, soldiers and missionaries towards the
newly-discovered lands. But so far the wave had not carried
them beyond the islands -- Cuba, the Bahamas, Haïti. The
coast of the mainland had only just been touched, at
Honduras and Darien: not a single white man yet knew that
beyond the Strait of Yucatán and the Gulf of Mexico lay
huge countries, with their crowded cities, their wars, their
states and their temples.

In Mexico there was the same ignorance: no notion that
fate was already standing at the door. The emperor continued
the methodical organisation of the territories subjected to
the Mexica, the ruling nation. One by one the last free
cities fell; and the distant villages of the tropics bowed to
the rule of the high central plain. It is true that some little
states kept their independence, particularly the aristocratic
republic of Tlaxcala, a besieged enclave in the middle of the
empire, cut off from all trade and from any kind of outlet;
but the xochiyaoyotl, the flowery war, was essential in the
very heart of the Mexican peace, for the service of the gods
and the glory of the sun.

A few years later and the veil which hid the one world
from the other was to be torn away. They would confront
one another, steel blades against swords of obsidian, guns

-xiv-