Note 9 — Chapter VII · March to the Sacred City of Cholula—The Natives Plot the Destruction of the Spaniards—Cortes Discovers their Treachery and Slaughters Several Thousand Indians—March to Mexico—Montezuma Meets the Strangers and Escorts them to the Capital
George P. (George Putnam) Upton translation
Popocatepetl is a volcano forty-five miles southeast of the Mexican capital. Its crater is 5000 feet in width and the peak is 17,853 feet high. It is called the “smoking mountain,” from popoca, “to smoke,” and tepetl, “mountain.”