Page:Romance of History, Mexico.djvu/39

 Ere Columbus left for the last time the shores of the New World there had arrived in Hispaniola a bold and resolute youth who was destined to enter the magic gate thrown open by the great discoverer, and to win the golden empire of his dreams.

Hernando Cortés, to whom this good fortune befell, was born in 1485 at the little town of Medellin, in Estremadura, in the south of Spain. Two old chroniclers indeed fix the date of his birth in 1483. They are both zealous supporters of Holy Church, and one of them declares "that Cortés came into the world the same day that that infernal beast, the false heretic Luther, entered it,—by way of compensation, no doubt, since the labours of the one to pull down the true faith were counterbalanced by those of the other to maintain and extend it!" "The same year that Luther was born in Eisleben," says the other, "Hernando Cortés was born in Medellin, the first to disturb the world and put under the devil's banner many faithful ones whose fathers and grandfathers for long years were Catholics, and the second to bring into the pale of the Church infinite multitudes who for numberless years had been under the power of Satan, wrapped up in vice and blind with idolatry."

All unconscious of this high destiny, Hernando Cortés indulged in a frankly misspent youth. His father, Martin Cortés, a captain of infantry, poor, though of honourable stock, had planned for his son a calling more profitable than his own. "It is the lawyers with their endless lawsuits who pile ducat upon ducat," thought the old soldier, "Hernando shall go to Salamanca and study law." To Salamanca, 19