Page:The Conquest of Mexico Volume 2.djvu/431

 Page 44 (1).—Captain Diaz had secured for his share of the spoil of the Philistines, as he tells us, a very good horse, with all his accoutrements, a brace of swords, three daggers, and a buckler,— a very beautiful outfit for the campaign. The general's orders were, naturally enough, not at all to his taste.—Ibid., cap. 124.

Page 44 (2).—Narvaez alleges that Cortés plundered him of property to the value of 100,000 castellanos of gold! (Demanda de Zavallos en nombre de Narvaez, MS.) If so, the pillage of the leader may have supplied the means of liberality to the privates.

Page 45 (1).—Demanda de Zavallos en nombre de Narvaez, MS.—Bernal Diaz, Hist, de la Conquista, cap. 124. —0viedo. Hist, de las Ind., MS., lib. 33, cap. 47.—Rel. Seg. de Cortés, ap. Lorenzana, p. 130.—Camargo, Hist, de Tlascala, MS. The visit of Narvaez left melancholy traces among the natives, that made it long remembered. A negro in his suite brought with him the small-pox. The disease spread rapidly in that quarter of the country, and great numbers of the Indian population soon fell victims to it.—Herrera, Hist. General, dec. 2, lib. 10, cap. 6.

Page 47 (1).—Gomara, Crónica, cap. 103.—Herrera, Hist. General, dec. 2, lib. 10, cap. 7. Bernal Diaz raises the amount to 1300 foot and 96 horse. (Ibid., cap. 125.) Cortés diminishes it to less than half that number. (Rel. Seg., ubi supra.) The estimate cited in the text from the two preceding authorities corresponds nearly enough with that already given from official documents of the forces of Cortés and Narvaez before the junction.

Page 48 (1).—(And they provided them with guides who should conduct them by way of) the lofty ranges of Tetzcuco, and show them [the view] from the highest peak of those wooded slopes and mountains of Tlallocan, which are of great altitude and thickly forested. And I myself have been there and have seen, and can bear witness that they are of such height that from them may be descried both hemispheres. For they are the greatest and loftiest passes in this New Spain, clad with woods and forests of mighty growth, cedars, cypresses, and pines.—Camargo, Hist, de Tlascala, MS.

Page 48 (2).—The historian partly explains the reason. "In that same city of Tezcuco there were many devoted relations and friends of those whom Pedro de Alvarado and his companions had killed in Mexico."—Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 88.

Page 52 (1).—See Alvarado's reply to queries of Cortés, as reported by Diaz (Hist, de la Conquista, cap. 125), with some additional particulars in Torquemada (Monarch. Ind., lib. 4, cap. 66), Solís (Conquista, lib. 4, cap. 12), and Herrera (Hist. General, dec. 2, lib. 10, cap. 8), who all seem content to endorse Alvarado's version of the matter. I find no other authority, of any weight, in the same charitable vein.

Page 52 (2).—Oviedo mentions a conversation which he had some years after this tragedy with a noble Spaniard, Don Thoan Cano, who came over in the train of Narvaez, and was present at all the subsequent operations of the army. He married a daughter of Montezuma, and settled in Mexico after the Conquest. Oviedo describes him as a man of sense and integrity. In answer to the historian's queries respecting the cause of the rising, he said, that Alvarado had wantonly perpetrated the massacre from pure avarice; and the Aztecs, enraged at such unprovoked and unmerited cruelty, rose, as they well might, to avenge it. (Hist, de las Ind., MS., lib. 33, cap. 54.)

Page 52 (3).—Such, indeed, is the statement of Ixtlilxochitl, derived, as he says, from the native Tezcucan annalists. According to them, the Tlascalans, urged by their hatred of the Aztecs and their thirst for plunder, persuaded Alvarado, nothing loth, that the nobles meditated a rising on the occasion of these festivities. The testimony is important, and I give it in the author's words: "Certain malicious Tlascaltecas (according to the histories of Tezcuco which I follow, and the letter to which I have previously referred), some of whom remembered that on similar festival occasions the Mexicans were in the habit of sacrificing great numbers of Tlascalteca captives, while others realised that this was the best possible opportunity for filling their hand