Page:The Conquest of Mexico Volume 2.djvu/441

 them by introducing miracles, which in fact only served to depreciate them. The true miracle was the behaviour of Cortés."—Voltaire, Essai sur les Mœurs, chap. 147.

Page 127 (6).—See Oviedo, Hist, de las Ind., MS., lib. 33, cap. 47.—Herrera, Hist. General, dec. 2, lib. 10, cap. 13.—Gomara, Crónica, cap. 110.

Page 129 (1).—Is it not the same fountain of which Toribio makes honourable mention in his topographical account of the country.? "There rises in Tlaxcala an important spring, towards the north, five leagues from the chief city. It rises in a village which is called Azumba, which means in their language head; and so it is, since this spring is the head and source of the largest river of all those flowing into the South Sea. Its mouth is near Zacatula."—Hist, de los Indios, MS., Parte 3, cap. 16.

Page 130 (1).—Bernal Diaz, Hist, de la Conquista, cap. 128. Thoan Cano, however, one of the army, denies this, and asserts that the natives received them like their children, and would take no recompense.

Page 131 (1).—"And thus I remained crippled in two fingers of my left hand"—is Cortés' own expression in his letter to the Emperor. (Rel. Seg., ap. Lorenzana, p. 152.) Don Thoan Cano, however, whose sympathies—from his Indian alliance, perhaps—seem to have been quite as much with the Aztecs as with his own countrymen, assured Oviedo, who was lamenting the general's loss, that he might spare his regrets, since Cortés had as many fingers on his hand, at that hour, as when he came from Castile. May not the word manco, in his letter, be rendered by "maimed"?

Page 132 (1).—Rel. Seg. de Cortés, ap. Lorenzana, p. 150.—Oviedo, Hist, de las Ind., MS, lib. 33, cap. 15.—Herrera gives the following inscription, cut on the bark of a tree by some of these unfortunate Spaniards. "By this road passed Juan Juste and his wretched companions, who were so much pinched by hunger, that they were obliged to give a solid bar of gold, weighing eight hundred ducats, for a few cakes of maize bread."—Hist. General, dec. 2, lib. 10, cap. 13.

Page 133 (1).—One is reminded of the similar remonstrance made by Alexander's soldiers to him, on reaching the Hystaspis,—but attended with more success; as, indeed, was reasonable. For Alexander continued to advance from the ambition of indefinite conquest, while Cortés was only bent on carrying out his original enterprise. What was madness in the one, was heroism in the other.

Page 134 (1).—This reply, exclaims Oviedo, showed a man of unconquerable spirit, and high destinies.

Page 135 (1).—Oviedo has expanded the harangue of Cortés into several pages, in the course of which the orator quotes Xenophon, and borrows largely from the old Jewish history, a style of eloquence savouring much more of the closet than the camp. Cortés was no pedant, and his soldiers were no scholars.

Page 135(2).—For the account of this turbulent transaction, see Bernal Diaz, Hist, de la Conquista, cap. 129.—Rel. Seg. de Cortés, ap. Lorenzana, p. 152.—Oviedo, Hist, de las Ind., MS., lib. 33, cap. 15.—Gomara, Crónica, cap. 112, 113.—Herrera, Hist. General, dec. 2, lib. 10, cap. 14. Diaz is exceedingly wroth with the chaplain, Gomara, for not discriminating between the old soldiers and the levies of Narvaez, whom he involves equally in the sin of rebellion. The captain's own version seems a fair one, and I have followed it, therefore, in the text.

Page 137 (1).—Oviedo, Hist, de las Ind., MS., lib. 33, cap. 15.—Herrera, Hist. General, dec. 2, lib. 10, cap. 14.—Sahagun, Hist, de Nueva España, MS., lib. 12, cap. 29.