Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1.djvu/130

110 had then elapsed since the fall of the Aztec Empire, and Bernal Diaz was no longer a young man; nowhere does he say that he had taken notes or memoranda of what happened from day to day, and yet, were his chronicle a journal, its details could hardly be more minute, nor its statements more emphatic. These were the great events of his life, worthy indeed to be the great events of a greater man's life, and doubtless he relived and rehearsed them constantly, and, being a man of quick and careful observation, given to pondering and reflecting upon all that he saw and heard, gifted moreover with a good memory, it is not so strange that in the quiet of his last years the retired soldier could evoke the procession of events in their perfect order.

He began writing in 1558, and his declared purpose was to correct the mistakes and misstatements of Gomara, and to show that not only had those under Cortes's control shared in the fighting, but had likewise been called into the counsels of their chief. His indubitable claim upon Mexico's perpetual gratitude is in his introduction of the orange-tree as, when on Grijalba's expedition, he landed one day, and planted eight orange seeds, which he brought from Cuba, all of which grew. The Indians, seeing the strange little plants coming up, carefully protected them from insects and other perils, and from this casual little plantation the culture of the orange-tree spread over all tierra caliente.

The father of Bernal Diaz was Francisco Diaz del Castillo y Gaban, and his mother was Maria Diez Rejon; as the former held the post of regidor of the important town of Medina del Campo, he must have been a man of some family.

The Verdedera Historia, as we have it, is incomplete, and was printed not from the original, nor even from a certified duplicate of it, but from a copy in possession of the councillor Ramirez de Prado. The work was undertaken by F. Remon, who died before its conclusion, so that it was passed on to Fray Gabriel Adarzo de Santander, afterwards Bishop of Otranto.

As literature, the work of Bernal Diaz ranks far below the letters of Cortes, and shows the writer to be without instruction or culture. The narrative is involved, the mass of small