The women sometime used a deep violet hair-dye.
Ear-rings, nose-rings, finger-rings, bracelets, anklets and necklaces
were of gold and silver.
Moteczuma himself, a tall slender man about forty years old, came to
meet them in a palanquin shining with gold and canopied with
feather-work. As he descended from it his attendants laid cotton mats
upon the ground that he might not soil his feet. He wore the broad
girdle and square cloak of cotton cloth which other men wore, but of the
finest weave. His sandals had soles of pure gold. Both cloak and sandals
were embroidered with pearls, emeralds, and a kind of stone much
prized by the Aztecs, the chalchivitl, green and white. On his head he
wore a plumed head-dress of green, the royal color. When Cortes with his
staff approached the building set apart for their quarters, Moteczuma
awaited them in the courtyard. From a vase of flowers held by an
attendant he took a massive gold collar, in which the shell of a certain
crawfish was set in gold and connected by golden links. Eight golden
ornaments a span long, wrought to represent the same shell-fish, hung
from this chain. Moteczuma hung the necklace about the neck of Cortes
with a graceful little speech of welcome.
[Illustration: "Moteczuma awaited them in the courtyard"--_Page_ 162]
The Aztec Emperor was making the best of a situation which he did not
like at all.
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