Page:Vol 2 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/358

338 the old system revived with ever increasing entailment, for a number of lives, side by side with corregimiento rule, till it withers in the general advancement, and disappears by decree of Cárlos III.

The question was of vital importance to the conquerors, who, after performing achievements [sic]unequalled for daring and grandeur, as Bernal Diaz asserts, had for a dozen years assisted to establish a new country for the crown. If their motives were not governed wholly by patriotism, the result nevertheless appeared to the benefit of their God, their country, and their king, and they were entitled to a better reward than appears to have been given them — instance such meritorious men as Montaño, the volcano-climber. Much of the complaint, as recorded in different memorials, and in the soldier chronicle of Bernal Diaz, is no doubt the chronic grumbling of men disappointed in their inordinate pretensions, or torn by envy at the greater honors and opulence gained by favorites of fortune, or by persons more careful of their opportunities than the reckless, shiftless adventurers who seized an emperor and subdued a nation, and then abandoned the substance to disperse in profitless search of new worlds to conquer. There had been here a Montezuma, and there an Atahualpa; surely there was nothing so very improbable in the fancy that there might be half a score of such kingdoms scattered about the world. But the gold and pearls of new kingdoms once more melted into air, and when the restless soldiers returned to neglected grants, they found themselves too often stripped of these. And so they struggled on, a prey to their own folly, yet ever bringing accusations against a not altogether thankless