(no subject)

[edg]

[Montezuma] was also terrified to learn how the cannon roared, how its noise resounded, how it caused one to faint and grow deaf. The messengers told him: "A thing like a ball of stone comes out of its entrails: it comes out shooting sparks and raining fire. The smoke that comes out of it has a pestilent odor, like that of rotten mud. The odor penetrates even to the brain and causes the greatest discomfort. If the cannon is aimed against a mountain, the mountain splits and cracks open. If it is aimed against a tree, it shatters the tree into splinters. This is a most unnatural sight, as if the tree had exploded from within."

From the Aztec Account of the Spanish,
ipse from the Messenger's Report (1519)

Finished all the reading, and translating (I will go back in time and hit Petronius over the head with a shovel every time he uses a bizarre participle or changes tense in mid-sentence), and conjugating (amo; ah, how my schoolwork mocks me).

I think I might want to be a linguist when I grow up.