Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1.djvu/121

 

ONCERNING the importance of the Five Letters of Relation of Hernando Cortes, which are now published altogether in an English translation for the first time, it may be permitted to quote a passage from the historian Dr. Robertson, whose part in the discovery of the first and fifth letters, here presented, was such as to give singular interest and value to his opinion.

"Our knowledge of the events which happened in the conquest of New Spain is derived from sources of information more original and more authentic than that of any transaction in the history of America.

"The letters of Cortes to the Emperor Charles V. are an historical monument, not only first in order of time, but of the greatest authenticity and value."

Dr. Robertson's appreciation was shared by his contemporaries, and has been confirmed by subsequent historians, who have drawn from the letters, as from an original source, many of their important facts, have appealed to them for confirmation of information procured from other sources, and have used them as a very touchstone of truth, in accepting or rejecting statements made by other early writers, even when these latter were eye-witnesses of the events they described.

From the beginning, Cortes adopted the plan of reporting faithfully and minutely to the Emperor, each incident, its causes and its consequences, and of recording his impressions of all that he saw in his strange surroundings, with the purpose of putting before his sovereign an accurate and complete picture of the momentous events then unrolling in the New World; and he has done this with perfect frankness and great simplicity, in letters which are minute but not wearisome,