Page:About Mexico - Past and Present.djvu/139

Rh have had a vision of tall-masted ships approaching the shore, and of pale-faced, bearded men in strange clothing landing on the coast with instruments of warfare unknown to her people. But beyond her ken, far over the blue waves which Feathered Serpent crossed in his retreat, a great nation was unconsciously preparing for the conquest of Mexico.

The earliest Spanish colonies were planted on several of the West India Islands. Every ship brought a horde of needy adventurers. In their insatiable thirst for gold they trod down the gentle, indolent race they found there until not one was left. The most cruel slavery prevailed wherever a Spaniard set his foot.

As the islanders melted away before their taskmasters, slave-hunting expeditions were fitted out by the planters to ravage other islands in search of new victims. It was during one of these slave-hunts that the Gulf of Mexico was discovered. Francisco Hernandez de Cordova, a Spanish planter in Cuba, was on his way to the Bahamas after a cargo of slaves, when a fearful storm drove the vessel far out of her course toward the west. After tossing about for three weeks he landed on the coast of Yucatan. He found there a people very different from the islanders among whom he had lived. The adventurers landed near a large Indian town. The inhabitants came out to see them, and seemed at first very friendly. But this proved to be a stratagem to draw the visitors into a better position for the battle which the natives intended to bring on. They had heard of the Spaniards and their white-winged ships, and probably of their slave-hunts, and determined to have nothing to do with the treacherous palefaces. In the fight which they provoked with the Spaniards it was proved that the