Page:Vol 1 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/325

Rh the Spaniards stood almost unscathed, and Wilson ridicules the whole campaign, reducing the Tlascalan population, for instance, to about ten thousand, with a fighting force of less than one thousand men: Such remarks certainly show a want of familiarity with the subject. ''Robertson, Hist. Am''., ii. 38-9; ''Wilson's Conq. Mex., 360-70; Benzoni, Hist. Mondo Nvovo'', 51. It is seldom that I encounter a book which I am forced to regard as beneath censure. He who prints and pays the printer generally has something to say, and generally believes something of what he says to be true. An idiot may have honest convictions, and a knave may have talents, but where a book carries to the mind of the reader that its author is both fool and knave, that is, that he writes only foolishness and does not himself believe what he says, I have not the time to waste in condemning such a work. And yet here is a volume purporting to be A New History of the Conquest of Mexico, written by Robert Anderson Wilson, and bearing date Philadelphia, 1859, which one would think a writer on the same subject should at least mention. The many and magnificent monuments which to the present day attest the great number and high culture of the Nahua race, and the testimony to this effect offered by witnesses on all sides, are ignored by him with a contempt that becomes amusing as the pages reveal his lack of investigation and culture. Indeed, the reader need go no further than the introduction to be convinced on the latter point. Another amusing feature is that the work pretends to vindicate the assertions of Las Casas, who, in truth, extols more than other Spanish author the vast number and advanced culture of the natives. In addition to this mistaken assumption, which takes away his main support, he states that Prescott worked in ignorance of his subject and his authorities, and to prove the assertion he produces wrongly applied or distorted quotations from different authors, or assumes meanings that were never intended, and draws erroneous conclusions. Thus it is he proves to his own satisfaction that Mexico City was but a village occupied by savages of the Iroquois stamp, and that Cortés was the boastful victor over little bands of naked red men. As for the ruins, they were founded by Phœnician colonists in remote ages. Another tissue of superficial observations, shaped by bigotry and credulous ignorance, was issued by the same author under the title of Mexico and its Religion, New York, 1855, most enterprisingly reprinted in the disguise of Mexico: its Peasants and its Priests, New York, 1856. In common with Mr Morgan, and others of that stamp, Mr Wilson seems to have deemed it incumbent on him to traduce Mr Prescott and his work, apparently with the view of thereby attracting attention to himself. Such men are not worthy to touch the hem of Mr Prescott's garment; they are not worthy of mention in the same category with him. We have often seen, in the New World wars, a thousand naked Americans put to flight by ten steel-clad Europeans, and I have clearly given the reasons. When we look at the Indians, with their comparatively poor weapons, their unprotected bodies, their inefficient discipline and tactics, whereby only a small portion of their force could be made available, the other portion serving rather as an obstruction, their custom of carrying off the dead, and other weak points, and when we contrast them with the well