Note 8 — XII

The celebrated Arbol de la Noche Triste is an old, weather-beaten cypress, which has been cherished and doctored by botanical commissioners and outraged by mobs. Under it Cortés is supposed to have sat and wept as he saw defile before him the tattered remnants of his army after the terrible retreat from Tenochtitlan, July 2, 1520. There are three of these especially historic trees which survived the horrors of the Conquest—the others are the Arbol de Montezuma, in the Chapultepec park, and the great Tree of Tule, in Oaxaca, which sheltered Cortés and his venturesome company on their way to Honduras.—E. O’S.