单项选择题

After a while I grew tired of the confusion and disturbance of the town. There were several bars open, one offered a cocktail feminino which I was curious to know more about. Instead I decided to remain sober and drove out of town and up to the Paso de Cortes, the high pass by which the conquistadors had broken through the Aztec defences. These are the foothills of the Sierra Madre Oriental and on a clear day the view from Amecameca is dominated by the two volcanoes, Popoeatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl. This was not a clear day. The heat haze pressed down beneath a layer of high cloud which hid the mountain peaks. The road started to climb through thick woodland. Indian women stood in some of the clearings, tending fires. They held out the tortillas they had been cooking, hoping for a sale. Their horses were tethered nearby; presumably they were on the last stage of their journey to the fair. They would be in town by nightfall, in time for the procession.
As I emerged from the woods, the clouds, which had hidden Popoeatepetl for several weeks, suddenly lifted and the peak stood distinct in the cold blue air. The peak was covered in snow and from the tip of this arose a thin plume of smoke. Below the ring of snow the volcanic slopes were rumpled into pleats of soft brown and grey. Not a tree or a blade of grass could be seen on those slopes.
The Aztecs believed that Popocatepetl was a former king and that Ixtaccihuatl, "the Sleeping Woman" was his faithful wife who accompanied him in death. I wondered what Cortes would have thought of all this beauty as he was guided between the volcanoes and knew that the guardian saints of the Aztecs were nothing more than volcanoes. It was as deserted now on the windy brown plateau as it was on the day he passed. Cortes is not honoured in Mexico—there are only two statues to him in the entire country—but on the Paso de Cortes a small bas-relief has been set into a stone. This shows him advancing, mounted on an armoured horse, a crowd of men around him and the Indian interpreter, Princess Marina, who bore his son, showing him the way. Without Marina, the Spanish could never have left the coast. They numbered only five hundred, but their arrival had been prophesied in the Aztec religion, of which with Marina’s help, they were able to take advantage and save themselves from Montezuma’s sacrificial altars.
In truth Cortes needs no monuments in Mexico; the whole country is a result of his reckless adventure. Every Church in Mexico is his monument, just as much as the medieval suits of armour which were being sold to the children in the town below the pass. A chill wind from the volcano started to blow and I returned to the warmth of the forest and the mist.
The legends of the Aztec suggest that ______.