Page:The Mastering of Mexico.djvu/371

Rh gold had not gone into the heap; and finally over the whole matter we should faultfind with Cortes and not with him.

We were all deeply in debt. Some of us owed for crossbows, which could only be purchased for fifty or sixty dollars, and others for a sword at fifty. In the same way there were other cheatings, for all charges were exorbitant. A surgeon who called himself Maestre Juan charged heavy fees for curing some bad wounds. So also a quack who doctored us, and was also apothecary and barber.

Among the soldiers in the three camps, and also in the sloops, were friends and partisans of the governor of Cuba, Diego Velasquez, and also soldiers of Narvaez, who not only bore Cortes no good will, they hated him; and when these saw he did not give them the shares they had calculated for their lot, they asked, "How comes it that all the gold belongs to him who held it?"

Our captain was staying in a small town near Mexico, lodging in a palace, the walls of which had been so lately plastered and whitewashed that charcoal or ink stood out clear. And on these walls every morning satires or lampoons appeared. One day, for instance, you would find, "The sun, moon, stars, the sea and land, follow their fixed courses, and if they deviate from their courses, they return to their original elements: Cortes in his ambition and love of