Page:The Conquest of Mexico Volume 1.djvu/11

 ARTIST'S PREFACE

HIS edition is the outcome of an obsession, a certainty that when at last the war should come to an end I must make a picture-book of the Conquest of Mexico. With conquest in the air, soldiering an all too familiar trade, religions in the melting-pot, and on the horizon a romantic brightness, this book seemed to me like the ship in which I would sail away to undiscovered islands.

From the outset, however, it was evident that the charm of such an adventure might be complicated by the necessity for an unusual amount of archæological impedimenta, my objective being ancient Mexico, not modern Mexico, where almost every trace of the old splendour was long ago obliterated by Christian zeal. The Gods have fled that country, and now one finds some of them sitting in ghostly quiet in the British Museum.

There, when I went to apply for further information, the authorities were so astonishingly kind that at first I thought I must have been mistaken for some important personage. But no. Such courtesy is "the tradition" apparently. Mr. Joyce, the high-priest, gave me a table to work at, while from cupboards and cases the treasures of ancient Mexico (their very curves a shock of lovely surprise) one by one were brought out to be studied at leisure, as well as books such as the Codex Zouche, the Codex Borgia, the Codex