Page:The Conquest of Mexico Volume 1.djvu/493

 of jewels, precious stuffs, and incense on a funeral pile; and the ashes deposited in a golden urn, were placed in the great temple of Huitzilopotchli, for whose worship the king, notwithstanding the lessons of his father, had some partiality.—Ixtlilochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 75.

Page 121 (1).—Yet the nobles were not all backward in manifesting their disgust. When Charles would have conferred the famous Burgundian order of the Golden Fleece on the Count of Benavente, that lord refused it, proudly telling him, "I am a Castilian. I desire no honours but those of my own country, in my opinion, quite as good as—indeed, better than—those of any other."—Sandoval, Historia de la Vida y Hechos del Emperador Carlos V. (Amberes, 1681), tom. i. p. 103.

Page 124 (1).—I will take the liberty to refer the reader, who is desirous of being more minutely acquainted with the Spanish colonial administration and the state of discovery previous to Charles V., to the History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella (Part 2, ch. 9, 26), where the subject is treated in extenso.

Page 124 (2).—See the curious document attesting this, and drawn up by order of Columbus, ap. Navarrete, Coleccion dc los Viages y de Descubrimientos (Madrid, 1825), tom. ii. Col. Dipl., No. 76.

Page 124 (3).—The island was originally called, by Columbus, Juana, in honour of prince John, heir to the Castilian crown. After his death it received the name of Fernandina, at the king's desire. The Indian name has survived both.—Herrera, Hist. General, descrip., cap. 6.

Page 124 (4).—The story is told by Las Casas in his appalling record of the cruelties of his countrymen in the New World, which charity—and common sense—may excuse us for believing the good father has greatly overcharged.—Brevissima Relacion de la Destruycion de las Indias (Venetia, 1643), p. 28.

Page 125 (1).—Among the most ancient of these establishments we find the Havana, Puerto del Principe, Trinidad, St. Salvador, and Matanzas, or the Slaughter`, so called from a massacre of the Spaniards there by the Indians.—Bernal Diaz, Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 8.

Page 125 (2).—Gomara, Historia de las Indias, cap. 52, ap. Barcia, tom. ii. Bernal Diaz says the word came from the vegetable yuca, and tale, the name for a hillock in which it is planted. (Hist de la Conquista, cap. 6.) M. Waldeck finds a much more plausible derivation in the Indian word Ouyouckatan "listen to what they say."—Voyage Pittoresque, p. 25.

Page 125 (3).—Two navigators, Solis and Pinzon, had descried the coast at far back as 1506, according to Herrera, though they had not taken possession of it. (Hist. General, dec. i, lib. 6, cap. 17.) It is, indeed, remarkable it should so long have eluded discovery, considering that it is but two degrees distant from Cuba.

Page 126 (1).—Oviedo, General y Natural Historia de las Indias, MS., lib. 33, cap. 1.—De Rebus Gestia, MS.—Carta del Cabildo de Vera Cruz (July 10, 1519), MS. Bernal Diaz denies that the original object of the expedition, in which he took part, was to procure slaves, though Velasquez had proposed it. (Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 2.) But he is contradicted in this by the other contemporary records above cited.

Page 126 (2).—Itinerario de la isola de Juchathan, novamcnte riteovata per il signor Joan de Grijalva, per il suo capellano, MS. The chaplain's word may be taken for the date, which is usually put at the eighth of April.

Page 126 (3).—De Rebus Gestis, MS.—Itinerario del Capellano, MS.