Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1.djvu/122

102 nor wanting in a certain literary excellence. His correspondence was voluminous, but, amongst all the others, both for the importance of the events recorded, as well as for their volume, the five letters or "relations" (Relaciones) as they are called, in winch he recounts all that happened from the date of his sailing from Cuba in 1519, till his return from the expedition into Yucatan in 1526, are those which the English historian justly described as "an historical monument of the greatest authenticity and value."

The first of these letters has never been found, and by some is believed, perhaps to have been either the one suppressed by the Council for the Indies at the instance of Panfilo de Narvaez, or the one taken by Juan de Florez from Alonzo de Avila, and thus prevented from reaching the Emperor. It bore the date of July 10, 1519, and left Vera Cruz on the 1 6th of that month with the two envoys, Alonzo Hernandez Puertocarrero and Francisco de Montejo. This letter was in duplicate, as was likewise the letter of the magistrates of the newly founded colony, which was shown to Cortes before it was sent. Bernal Diaz del Castello, who was one of the signers of the joint letter, says that Cortes had omitted from his own letter the account of the expeditions of Francesco Hernandez de Cordoba, and of Juan de Grijalba. The letter of Cortes and that of the magistrates confirmed one another, as they were intended to do, and, according to Bernal Diaz, that of the magistrates was the more detailed of the two; hence it is, historically, the more valuable. The only important events which had happened up to that date were the change in the character and objects of the expedition, and the founding of Vera Cruz, and on these points Cortes and the magistrates were in perfect accord.

The search for this missing letter having been given up in despair, it remained for the perspicacity of Dr. Robertson to divine, that, as the Emperor was about leaving Spain for Germany at the time the envoys from Vera Cruz arrived with the letters, they might still be found in some of the Imperial archives, and he accordingly undertook a search, for which all necessary facilities were obtained by the British Ambassador in Vienna. This was crowned with a dual success, in