Note 97 — Chapter VI · THE FINDING OF STRANGE COASTS.

Footnote 97: See Bandelier's Archæological Tour in Mexico, Boston, 1885, pp. 160-164. Torquemada's words, cited by Bandelier, are "Quando entraron los Españoles, dicen que tenia mas de quarenta mil vecinos esta ciudad." Monarquía Indiana, lib. iii. cap. xix. p. 281. A prolific source of error is the ambiguity in the word vecinos, which may mean either "inhabitants" or "householders." Where Torquemada meant 40,000 inhabitants, uncritical writers fond of the marvellous have understood him to mean 40,000 houses, and multiplying this figure by 5, the average number of persons in a modern family, have obtained the figure 200,000. But 40,000 houses peopled after the old Mexican fashion, with at least 200 persons in a house (to put it as low as possible), would make a city of 8,000,000 inhabitants! Las Casas, in his Destruycion de las Indias, vii., puts the population of Cholula at about 30,000. I observe that Llorente (in his Œuvres de Las Casas, tom. i. p. 38) translates the statement correctly. I shall recur to this point below, vol. ii. p. 264.[Back to Main Text]