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136 soon fitted out. One hundred and fifty of Grijalva's followers enlisted under Cortez, besides other volunteers numbering six hundred men. While in Trinidad the soldiers were set to work to quilt their jackets with cotton, which grew in great abundance around the place. This was a fashion borrowed from the Indians, and served a good purpose in warding on the arrows used in battle. Hard fighting was expected, but little did the busy army of quilters dream of the bloody struggle before them, or how great and far-reaching would be its consequences.

The instructions given by the Spanish authorities to their military leaders in the New World were such as would suit an army of crusaders. Such, in fact, the invaders were, though their zeal for Christianity spent itself in forcing the pagans to bow to crosses and images and to accept the pope as lord of lords. This potentate had kindly divided all the world outside of Europe between his faithful children the king of Spain and the king of Portugal. Several popes had given to the latter the undiscovered world from Cape Bojador, in Africa, to India. On the 4th of May, 1493, Alexander VI. published a bull in which he drew an imaginary line from the north pole to the south pole one hundred leagues west of the Azores, giving to Spain all that lay west and to Portugal all that lay east of it. With a commission from his king to take possession of such an inheritance, and one from Rome to convert all the heathen, each soldier felt himself to be a Heaven-sent missionary, and, however wicked he might otherwise be, his good work for the Church would atone for all his sins and secure for him at last a seat in paradise. The flag of the expedition showed that it was going on a religious errand. On a ground of white and blue was a red cross surrounded with flames of fire. Its