Page:The Conquest of Mexico Volume 2.djvu/451

 quoting a few verses from a beautiful description in "Madoc," and one as pertinent as it is beautiful:—

Their thousand boats, and the ten thousand oars From whose broad bowls the waters fall and flash, And twice ten thousand feather'd helms, and shields, Glittering with gold and scarlet plumery. Onward they come with song and swelling horn; . . . On the other side Advance the British barks; the freshening breeze Fills the broad sail; around the rushing keel The waters sing, while proudly they sail on. Lords of the water."

Page 236 (1).—Sahagun, Hist. de Nueva España, MS., lib. 12, cap. 32.—Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 95.—Oviedo, Hist. de las Ind., MS., lib. 33, cap. 23.—Rel. Terc. de Cortés, ap. Lorenzana, pp. 247, 248.

Page 236 (2).—Ibid., ubi supra.—Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich., MS., cap. 95. Here terminates the work last cited of the Tezcucan chronicler; who has accompanied us from the earliest period of our narrative down to this point in the final siege of the capital. Whether the concluding pages of the manuscript have been lost, or whether he was interrupted by death, it is impossible to say. But the deficiency is supplied by a brief sketch of the principal events of the siege, which he has left in another of his writings. He had, undoubtedly, uncommon sources of information in his knowledge of the Indian languages and picture-writing, and in the oral testimony which he was at pains to collect from the actors in the scenes he describes. All these advantages are too often counterbalanced by a singular incapacity for discriminating—I will not say, between historic truth and falsehood (for what is truth.?)—but between the probable, or rather the possible, and the impossible. One of the generation of primitive converts to the Romish faith, he lived in a state of twilight civilisation, when, if miracles were not easily wrought, it was at least easy to believe them.

Page 237 (1).—Ixtlilxochitl, in his Thirteenth Relation, embracing among other things a brief notice of the capture of Mexico, of which an edition has been given to the world by the industrious Bustamante, bestows the credit of this exploit on Cortés himself: "In the great temple was the figure of Huitzilopoxctli, where Cortés and Ixtlilxuchitl, arriving together, both beheld it. Cortés seized the mask of gold which the idol wore, with a number of precious stones inlaid in it."—Venida de los Esp., p. 29.

Page 239 (1).—The great mass of the Otomies were an untamed race, who roamed over the broad tracts of the plateau, far away to the north. But many of them, who found their way into the valley became blended with the Tezcucan, and even with the Tlascalan nation, making some of the best soldiers in their armies.

Page 239 (2).—"Istrisuchil (Ixtlilxochitl), who was twenty-three or twenty-four years of age, a man of great vigour, feared and loved by all." (Rel. Terc. de Cortés, ap. Lorenzana, p. 251.) The greatest obscurity prevails among historians in respect to this prince, whom they seem to have confounded very often with his brother and predecessor on the throne of Tezcuco. It is rare that either of them is mentioned by any other than his baptismal name of Hernando; and, if Herrera is correct in the assertion that this name was assumed by both, it may explain in some degree the confusion. (Hist. General, dec. 3, lib. 1, cap. 18.) I have conformed in the main to the old Tezcucan chronicler, who gathered his account of his kinsman, as he tells us, from the records of his nation, and from the oral testimony of the contemporaries of the prince himself.— Venida de los Esp., pp. 30, 31.