Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 2 (of 8) / Spanish Explorations and Settlements in America from the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Century

by Unknown

CHAPTER VI.

CORTÉS AND HIS COMPANIONS.

BY JUSTIN WINSOR,

The Editor.

GRIJALVA had returned in 1518 to Cuba from his Western expedition,[1057] flushed with pride and expectant of reward. It was his fate, however, to be pushed aside unceremoniously, while another was sent to follow up his discoveries. Before Grijalva had returned, the plan was formed; and Hernando Cortés distanced his competitors in suing for the leadership of the new expedition. Cortés was at this time the alcalde of Santiago in Cuba, and about thirty-three years old,—a man agile in mind, and of a frame well compacted for endurance; with a temper to please, and also to be pleased, if you would but wait on his wishes. He had some money, which Velasquez de Cuellar, the Governor, needed; he knew how to decoy the intimates of the Governor, and bait them with promises: and so the appointment of Cortés came, but not altogether willingly, from Velasquez.

Cortés was born in Spain,[1058] of humble, respectable stock. Too considerable animal spirits had made him an unprofitable student at Salamanca, though he brought away a little Latin and a lean store of other learning. A passion for the fairer sex and some military ardor, dampened with scant income all the while, characterized the following years; till finally, in 1504, he sailed on one of the fleets for the New World. Here he soon showed his quality by participating in the suppression of an Indian revolt. This got him a small official station, and he varied the monotony of life with love intrigues and touches of military bravado. In 1511, when Diego Columbus sent Velasquez on an expedition to Cuba, Cortés joined it as the commander’s executive officer. A certain adroitness turned a quarrel which he had with Velasquez (out of which grew his marriage with a fair Catalina) to his advantage with the Governor, who made him in the end the alcalde of Santiago,—a dignity which mining and stock-raising luckily enabled the adventurer to support. He was in this condition when all schemes worked happily, and Velasquez was induced to commission him commander-in-chief of the new expedition.

VELASQUEZ.

Fac-simile of an engraving in Herrera, i. 298. It is lithographed in Cabajal’s México, ii. 21.

The Governor gave him instructions on the 23d of October, 1518. Cortés understood, it turned out, that these were to be followed when necessary and disregarded when desirable. There seemed, indeed, to have been no purpose to confine the business of the expedition to exploration, as the instructions set forth.[1059] Cortés put all his substance into ships and outfits. He inveigled his friends into helping him. Velasquez converted what Government resources he could to the purpose of the expedition, while at the same time he seems to have cunningly sold to Cortés his own merchandise at exorbitant prices. Twenty thousand ducats apparently went into somebody’s pockets to get the expedition well started.[1060] Three hundred men, including some of position, joined him. The Governor’s jester, instigated, as is supposed, by Velasquez’ relatives, threw out a hint that Cortés was only preparing to proclaim his independence when he reached the new domain. The thought worried the Governor, and seems in part to have broken the spell of the admiration which he entertained for Cortés; yet not so much so but he could turn a cold shoulder to Grijalva when he arrived with his ships, as happened at this juncture.

Cortés could not afford to dally; and secret orders having been given for all to be in readiness on the evening of the 17th of November, on the next morning the fleet sailed.[1061] There were six vessels composing it, and a seventh later joined them. At Trinidad (Cuba) his force was largely augmented with recruits from Grijalva’s men. Here messengers arrived from Velasquez, ordering the authorities to depose Cortés and put another in command. Cortés had, however, too strongly environed himself; and he simply took one of the messengers into his service, and sent back the other with due protestations of respect. Then he sailed to San Cristóbal (Havana), sending a force overland to pick up horses. The flagship met a mishap on the way, but arrived at last. Cortés landed and displayed his pomp. Letters from Velasquez still followed him, but no one dared to arrest him. He again sailed. His fleet had now increased to twelve vessels, the largest measuring one hundred tons; his men were over six hundred, and among them only thirteen bore firelocks; his artillery consisted of ten guns and four falconets. Two hundred natives, men and women, were taken as slaves. Sixteen horses were stowed away on or below deck.[1062] This was the force that a few days later, at Guaguanico, Cortés passed in review, while he regaled his men with a specious harangue, steeped in a corsair’s piety. On the 18th of February they steered boldly away on the mission which was to become famous.

Looking around upon his officers, Cortés could discover, later if not then, that he had some stanch lieutenants. There was Pedro de Alvarado, who had already shown his somewhat impetuous quality while serving under Grijalva. There was Francisco de Montejo, a good administrator as well as a brave soldier. Names not yet forgotten in the story of the Conquest were those of Alonso de Avila, Cristóbal de Olid, and the youngest of all, Gonzalo de Sandoval, who was inseparable from his white stallion Motilla. Then there were Velasquez de Leon, Diego de Ordaz, and others less known to fame.

The straggling vessels gathered again at Cozumel Island, near the point of Yucatan. Cortés sent an expedition to discover and ransom some Christians who were in the interior, as he heard. The mission failed; but a single one of the wanderers, by some other course, found the Spaniards, and was welcomed as an interpreter. This man reported that he and another were the sole survivors of a ship’s company wrecked on the coast eight years before.

CANNON OF CORTÉS’ TIME.

As represented in a cut by Israel van Mecken, which is here reduced from a fac-simile in A. O. Essenwein’s Kulturhistorischer Bilder Atlas, ii., Mittelalter (Leipsic, 1883), pl. cxv. It will be observed that the pieces have no trunnions, and are supported in a kind of trough. They were breech-loaders by means of chambers, three of which, with handles, are seen (in the cut) lying on the ground, and one is in place, in the gun on the right. In the Naval Museum at Annapolis there are guns captured in the Mexican war, that are supposed to be the ones used by Cortés. A search of the records of the Ordnance Department at Washington, instituted for me by Commodore Sicard, at the suggestion of Prof. Charles E. Munroe of the Naval Academy, has not, however, revealed any documentary evidence; but a paper in the Army and Navy Journal, Nov. 22, 1884, p. 325, shows such guns to have been captured by Lieutenant Wyse in the “Darien.” The guns at Annapolis are provided with like chambers, as seen in photographs kindly sent to me. Similar chambers are now, or were recently, used in firing salutes on the Queen’s birthday in St. James’s Park. Cf. Stanley’s De Gama’s Voyages (Hakluyt Society), p. 227.

Early in March the fleet started to skirt the Yucatan shore, and Cortés had his first fight with the natives at Tabasco,—a conflict brought on for no reason but that the town would not supply provisions. The stockade was forced, and the place formally occupied. A more signal victory was required; and the Spaniards, getting on shore their horses and artillery, encountered the savage hordes and dispersed them,—aided, as the veracious story goes, by a spectral horseman who shone upon the field. The native king only secured immunity from further assaults by large presents. The Spaniards then re-embarked, and next cast anchor at San Juan de Ulloa.

CORTÉS’ VOYAGE TO MEXICO.

This is a reproduction of the map in Arthur Helps’s Spanish Conquest, ii. 236.

Meanwhile the rumors of the descent of the Spaniards on the coast had certainly hurried to Montezuma at his capital; and his people doubtless rehearsed some of the many portents which are said to have been regarded.[1063] We read also of new temples erected, and immense sacrifices of war-captives made, to propitiate the deities and avert the dangers which these portents and forebodings for years past had indicated to the believing.

CORTÉS AND HIS ARMS.

Copied from a cut in Gabriel Lasso de la Vega’s Cortés valeroso,—a poem published at Madrid in 1588. There is a copy in Harvard College Library; cf. Carter-Brown, i. 377. The same cut is also used in the edition published in 1594, then called Mexicana.

The men of Grijalva had already some months earlier been taken to be similar woful visitants, and one of Montezuma’s officers had visited Grijalva’s vessel, and made report of the wonders to the Mexican monarch. Studied offices of propitiation had been ordered, when word came back that the ship of the bearded men had vanished.

GABRIEL LASSO DE LA VEGA.

Fac-simile of the portrait in Cortés valeroso.

The coming of Cortés was but a dreaded return. While his ship lay at Juan de Ulloa, two canoes came from the main, and their occupants climbed to his deck. No one could understand them. The rescued Spaniard who had been counted on as an interpreter was at a loss. At last a female slave, Marina by name, taken at Tabasco, solved the difficulty. She could understand this same Spaniard, and knew also Aztec.[1064] Through this double interpretation Cortés now learned that the mission of his visitors was one of welcome and inquiry. After the usual interchange of gifts, Cortés sent word to the cacique that he would soon confer with him. He then landed a force, established a camp, and began to barter with the natives. To a chief, who soon arrived, Cortés announced his intention to seek the presence of Montezuma and to deliver the gifts and messages with which he was charged as the ambassador of his sovereign. Accordingly, bearing such presents as Cortés cared to send forward, native messengers were sent to Montezuma to tell tales of the sights they had seen,—the prancing horses and the belching cannon. The Mexican king sought to appease the eagerness of the new-comers by returning large stores of fabrics and gold, wishing them to be satisfied and to depart. The gold was not a happy gift to produce such an end.

Meanwhile Cortés, by his craft, quieted a rising faction of the party of Velasquez which demanded to be led back to Cuba. He did this by seeming to acquiesce in the demand of his followers in laying the foundations of a town and constituting its people a municipality competent to choose a representative of the royal authority. This done, Cortés resigned his commission from Velasquez, and was at once invested with supreme power by the new municipality. The scheme which Velasquez had suspected was thus brought to fruition. Whoever resisted the new captain was conquered by force, persuasion, tact, or magnetism; and Cortés became as popular as he was irresistible.

At this point messengers presented themselves from tribes not far off who were unwilling subjects of the Aztec power. The presence of possible allies was a propitious circumstance, and Cortés proceeded to cultivate the friendship of these tribes. He moved his camp day by day along the shore, inuring his men to marches, while the fleet sailed in company. They reached a large city, and were regaled. Each chief told of the tyranny of Montezuma, and the eyes of Cortés glistened. The Spaniards went on to another town, slaves being provided to bear their burdens. Here they found tax-gatherers of Montezuma collecting tribute. Emboldened by Cortés’ glance, his hosts seized the Aztec emissaries and delivered them to the Spaniards. Cortés now played a double game. He propitiated the servants of Montezuma by secretly releasing them, and added to his allies by enjoining every tribe he could reach to resist the Aztec collectors of tribute.

The wandering municipality, as represented in this piratical army, at last stopped at a harbor where a town (La Villa Rica de Vera Cruz) sprang up, and became the base of future operations.[1065]

Montezuma and his advisers, angered by the reports of the revolt of his subjects, had organized a force to proceed against them, when the tax-gatherers whom Cortés had released arrived and told the story of Cortés’ gentleness and sympathy. It was enough; the rebellion needed no such active encounter. The troops were not sent, and messengers were despatched to Cortés, assuring the Spanish leader that Montezuma forbore to chastise the entertainers of the white strangers. Cortés now produced other of the tax-gatherers whom he had been holding, and they and the new embassy went back to Montezuma more impressed than before; while the neighboring people wondered at the deference paid by Montezuma’s lieutenants to the Spaniards. It was no small gain for Cortés to have instigated the equal wonder of two mutually inimical factions.

CORTÉS.

After a picture on panel in the Massachusetts Historical Society’s gallery. It is described in the Catalogue of the Cabinet of that Society as “Restored by Henry Sargent about 1831, and again by George Howorth about 1855.” Cf. Proceedings, i. 446, where it is said to have been given by the family of the late Dr. Foster, of Brighton, who received it by inheritance from a Huguenot family who brought it to New England after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

The Spanish leader took occasion to increase his prestige by despatching expeditions hither and thither. Then he learned of efforts made by Velasquez to supplant him. To confirm his rule against the Cuban Governor he needed the royal sanction; and the best way to get that was to despatch a vessel with messages to the Emperor, and give him earnest of what he might yet expect in piles of gold thrown at his feet. So the flagship sailed for Spain; and in her in command and to conduct his suit before the throne, Cortés sent faithful servitors, such as had influence at court, to outwit the emissaries of Velasquez. Sailing in July, touching at Cuba long enough to raise the anger of Velasquez, but not long enough for him to catch them, these followers of Cortés reached Spain in October, and found the agents of Velasquez ready for them. Their vessel was seized, and the royal ear was held by Bishop Fonseca and other friends of the Cuban Governor; yet not so effectually but that the duplicate letters of Cortés’ messengers were put into the Emperor’s hand, and the train of natives paraded before him.

THE MARCH OF CORTÉS ON MEXICO.

A reproduction of the map in Ruge’s Zeitalter der Entdeckungen, p. 363. Similar maps are given by Prescott, Helps, and Bancroft. Cabajal (México, ii. 200) gives a map of the route followed from the Gulf, with a profile of the country traversed. Bancroft (Mexico, vol. ii.) gives a map of New Spain as known to the Conquerors. Early maps of Nova Hispania, or New Spain, are not infrequent. Cf. Blaeu’s Atlas, De Bry, several issued by Vander Aa, of Amsterdam, the Brussels edition (1704) of Solis, Lorenzana’s Cortés (1770), and various others.

Now came the famous resolve of Cortés. He would band his heterogeneous folk together—adherents of Cortés and of Velasquez—in one common cause and danger. So he adroitly led them to be partners in the deed which he stealthily planned.[1066] Hulk after hulk of the apparently worm-eaten vessels of the fleet sank in the harbor, until there was no flotilla left upon which any could desert him. The march to Mexico was now assured. The force with which to accomplish this consisted of about four hundred and fifty Spaniards, six or seven light guns, fifteen horses, and a swarm of Indian slaves and attendants. A body of the Totonacs accompanied them.[1067] Two or three days brought them into the higher plain and its enlivening vegetation. When they reached the dependencies of Montezuma, they found orders had been given to extend to them every courtesy. They soon reached the Anahuac plateau, which reminded them not a little of Spain itself. They passed from cacique to cacique, some of whom groaned under the yoke of the Aztec; but not one dared do more than orders from Montezuma dictated. Then the invaders approached the territory of an independent people, those of Tlascala, who had walled their country against neighboring enemies. A fight took place at the frontiers, in which the Spaniards lost two horses. They forced passes against great odds, but again lost a horse or two,—which was a perceptible diminution of their power to terrify. The accounts speak of immense hordes of the Tlascalans, which historians now take with allowances, great or small. Cortés spread what alarm he could by burning villages and capturing the country people. His greatest obstacle soon appeared in the compacted army of Tlascalans arrayed in his front. The conflict which ensued was for a while doubtful. Every horse was hurt, and sixty Spaniards were wounded; but the result was the retreat of the Tlascalans. Divining that the Spanish power was derived from the sun, the enemy planned a night attack; but Cortés suspected it, and assaulted them in their own ambush.

Cortés now had an opportunity to display his double-facedness and his wiles. He received embassies both from Montezuma and from the senate of the Tlascalans. He cajoled each, and played off his friendship for the one in cementing an alliance with the other. But to Tlascala and Mexico he would go, so he told them.

CORTÉS.[1068]

The Tlascalans were not averse, for they thought it boded no good to the Aztecs if he could be bound to themselves. Montezuma dreaded the contact, and tried to intimidate the strangers by tales of the horrible difficulties of the journey.

MONTEZUMA.

This cut of the “Rex ultimus Mexicanorum” is a fac-simile from Montanus and Ogilby, p. 253. The source of the likeness is not apparent, and the picture seems questionable. Prescott, in his second volume, gives a likeness, which belonged to the descendants of the Aztec king, the Counts of Miravalle. It is claimed to have been painted by an artist, Maldonado, who accompanied Cortés; but, on the other hand, some have represented it as an ideal portrait painted after the Conquest. Prescott (vol. ii. p. 72) makes up his description of Montezuma from various early authorities,—Diaz, Zuazo (MS.), Ixtlilxochitl, Gomara, Oviedo, Acosta, Sahagun, Toribio, etc., particularizing the references. H. H. Bancroft (Mexico, i. 285) also depicts him from the early sources. He is made of an age from forty to fifty-four by different writers; but the younger period is thought by most to be nearest. Bancroft refers to the prints in Th. Armin’s Das alte Mexico (Leipsic, 1865) as representing a coarse Aztec warrior, and the native picture in Carbajal Espinosa’s Historia de México (Mexico, 1862) as purely conventional. The same writer thinks the colored portrait, “peint par ordre de Cortes,” in Linati’s Costûmes et mœurs de Mexique (Brussels) conforms to the descriptions; while that in Clavigero’s Storia antica del Messico (1780) is too small to be satisfactory. The line of Montezuma’s descendants is traced in Prescott, Mexico, ii. 339, iii. 446, and in Bancroft, Mexico, i. 459. Cf. also the portrait of Montezuma, “d’après Sandoval,” given in Charton’s Voyageurs, iii. 393, and that in Cumplido’s Mexican edition of Prescott’s Mexico vol. iii.

Presently the army took up its march for Tlascala, where they were royally received, and wives in abundance were bestowed upon the leaders. Next they passed to Cholula, which was subject to the Aztecs; and here the Spaniards were received with as much welcome as could be expected to be bestowed on strangers with the hostile Tlascalans in their train. The scant welcome covered treachery, and Cortés met it boldly. Murder and plunder impressed the Cholulans with his power, and gave some sweet revenge to his allies. Through the wiles of Cortés a seeming reconciliation at last was effected between these neighboring enemies. But the massacre of Cholula was not a pastime, the treachery of Montezuma not forgotten; and the march was again resumed, about six thousand native allies of one tribe and another following the army. The passage of a defile brought the broad Valley of Mexico into view; and Montezuma, awed by the coming host, sent a courtier to personate him and to prevail upon Cortés to avoid the city. The trick and the plea were futile. On to one of the aquatic cities of the Mexican lakes the Spaniards went, and were received in great state by a vassal lord of Montezuma, who now invited the Spanish leader to the Aztec city. On they went. Town after town received them; and finally, just without his city, Montezuma, in all his finery and pomp, met the Spanish visitors, bade them welcome, and committed them to an escort which he had provided. It was the 8th of November, 1519. Later in his own palace, in the quarters which had been assigned to Cortés, and on several occasions, the two indulged in reciprocal courtesies and watched each other. Cortés was not without fear, and his allies warned him of Aztec treachery. His way to check foul designs was the bold one of seizing Montezuma and holding him as a hostage; and he did so under pretence of honoring him. A chieftain who had attacked a party of the Spaniards by orders of Montezuma some time before, was executed in front of the palace. Montezuma himself was subjected for a while to chains. Expeditions were sent out with impunity to search for gold mines; others explored the coast for harbors. A new governor was sent back to Villa Rica, and he sent up shipwrights; so it was not long before Cortés commanded a flotilla on the city lakes, and the captive king was regaled with aquatic sports.

MONTEZUMA.[1069]

MEXICO BEFORE THE CONQUEST.

This is reduced from the cut in Henry Stevens’s American Bibliographer, p. 86, which in turn is reproduced from the edition of Cortés’ letters published at Nuremberg in 1524. Bancroft in his Mexico (vol. i. p. 280) gives a greatly reduced sketch of the same plan, and adds to it a description and references to the various sources of our information regarding the Aztec town; and this may be compared with the same author’s Native Races, ii. 560. Helps describes the city in his Spanish Conquest (New York ed., ii. 277, 423), where he thinks that the early chroniclers failed to make clear the full number of the causeways connecting the town with the main, and traversing the lake. Prescott describes it in his Mexico (Kirk’s ed., ii. 101), and discredits the plan given in Bullock’s Mexico as one prepared by Montezuma for Cortés. This last plan is also given in Carbajal’s Historia de México (1862), ii. 221. The nearly equal distance on all sides at which the shores of the lake stand from the town is characteristic of this earliest of the plans (1524); and in this particular it is followed in various plans and bird’s-eye views of the town of the sixteenth century, and in some of a later date. The Aztec town had been founded in 1325, and had been more commonly called Tenochtitlan, which the Spaniards turned into Temixtitan and Tenustitan, the term Mexico being properly applied to one of the principal wards of the city. The two names were first sometimes joined, as Temixtitlan-Mexico (1555); but in the end the more pronounceable part survived, and the rest was lost. Cf. Bancroft, Mexico, i. 12-14, with references. The correspondence of sites in the present city as compared with those of the Aztec time and of the conquerors, is examined in Alaman’s Discertaciones sobre la historia de la república Méjicana (Mexico, 1844-1849), ii. 202, 246; Carbajal Espinosa’s Historia de México, ii. 226, and by Ramirez in the Mexican edition of Prescott. Cf. Ant. du Pinet’s Descriptions de plusieurs villes et forteresses, Lyon, 1564.

Then came symptoms of conspiracy among the native nobles, with the object of overthrowing the insolent strangers; and Cacama, a nephew of Montezuma and a chief among them, indulged the hope of seizing the throne itself. Montezuma protested to his people that his durance was directed by the gods, and counselled caution. When this did not suffice, he gave orders, at the instigation of Cortés, to seize Cacama, who was brought to Mexico and placed in irons. The will of Cortés effected other displacements of the rural chiefs; and the allegiance of Montezuma to the Spanish sovereign became very soon as sure and abject as forms could make it.

Tribute was ordered, and trains bore into the city wealth from all the provinces,—to be the cause of heart-burnings and quarrels in the hour of distribution. The Aztec king and the priests were compelled to order the removal of idols from their temples, and to see the cross and altar erected in their places.

Meanwhile the difficulties of Cortés were increasing. The desecration of the idols had strengthened the party of revolt, and Montezuma was powerless to quiet them. He warned the Spaniards of their danger. Cortés, to dispel apprehension, sent men to the coast with the ostensible purpose of building ships for departure. It was but a trick, however, to gain time; for he was now expecting a response to his letters sent to Spain, and he hoped for supplies and a royal commission which might enable him to draw reinforcements from Cuba.

The renegade leader, however, had little knowledge of what was planning at this very moment in that island. Velasquez de Cuellar, acting under a sufficient commission, had organized an expedition to pursue Cortés, and had given the command of it to Panfilo de Narvaez. The friends of Cortés and those who dreaded a fratricidal war joined in representations to the audiencia, which sent Lucas Vasquez de Aillon to prevent an outbreak. The fleet under Narvaez left Cuba, Aillon on board, with instructions to reach a peaceable agreement with Cortés; but this failing, they were to seek other regions. In April, 1520, after some mishaps, the fleet, which had been the largest ever seen in those waters, anchored at San Juan de Ulloa, where they got stories of the great success of Cortés from some deserters of one of his exploring parties. On the other hand, these same deserters, learning from Narvaez the strength and purpose of the new-comers,—for the restraint of Aillon proved ineffectual,—communicated with the neighboring caciques; and the news was not slow in travelling to Montezuma, who heard it not long after the mock submission of Cortés and the despatching of the ship-builders to the coast.

Fac-simile of an engraving in Herrera, ii. 274. For appearance and other portraits, see Bancroft, Mexico, i. 75. One of a sinister aspect often engraved, but which Ramirez distrusts, is given in Cabajal’s México, ii. 341; in the Proceso de residencia contra Pedro de Alvarado (Mexico, 1847); and in Cumplido’s Mexican edition of Prescott’s Mexico, vol. iii.

Narvaez next tried, in vain, to swerve Velasquez de Leon from his fidelity to Cortés,—for this officer was exploring with a party in the neighborhood of the coast. Sandoval, in command at Villa Rica, learned Narvaez’ purposes from spies; and when messengers came to demand the surrender of the town, an altercation ensued, and the chief messengers were seized and sent to Cortés. The Conqueror received them kindly, and, overcoming their aversion, he sent them back to Narvaez with letters and gifts calculated to conciliate. While many under Narvaez were affected, the new leader remained stubborn, seized Aillon, who was endeavoring to mediate, and sent him on shipboard with orders to sail for Cuba. Thus the arrogance of Narvaez was greatly helping Cortés in his not very welcome environment.

Cortés now boldly divided his force; and leaving Alvarado behind with perhaps one hundred and forty men,—for the accounts differ,[1070]—and taking half that number with him, beside native guides and carriers, marched to confront Narvaez. Velasquez de Leon with his force joined him on the way, and a little later Sandoval brought further reinforcements; so that Cortés had now a detachment of nearly three hundred men. Cortés had prudently furnished them long native lances, with which to meet Narvaez’ cavalry, for his own horsemen were very few. Adroitness on the part of Cortés and a show of gold had their effect upon messengers who, with one demand and another, were sent to him by Narvaez. Velasquez was sent by Cortés to the enemy’s camp; but the chief gain to Cortés from this manœuvre was a more intimate knowledge of the army and purpose of Narvaez. He then resolved to attack the intruder,—who, however, became aware of the intention of Cortés, but, under the stress of a storm, unaccountably relaxed his precautions. Cortés took advantage of this carelessness; and attacking boldly by night, carried everything before him, and captured the rival leader. The loss was but small to either side. The followers of the invader now became adherents of Cortés, and were a powerful aid in his future movements.[1071] The same good fortune had given him possession of the invader’s fleet.

AUTOGRAPH OF PEDRO DE ALVARADO.

Copied from a fac-simile in Cabajal’s México, ii. 686.

Meanwhile there were stirring times with Alvarado in Mexico. The Aztecs prepared to celebrate a high religious festival. Alvarado learned, or pretended to learn, that the disaffected native chiefs were planning to rise upon the Spaniards at its close. So he anticipated their scheme by attacking them while at their worship and unarmed. Six hundred or more of the leading men were thus slain. The multitude without the temple were infuriated, and the Spaniards regained their quarters, not without difficulty, Alvarado himself being wounded. Behind their defences they managed to resist attack till succor came.

Cortés, who had learned of the events, was advancing, attaching to himself the peoples who were inimical to the Aztecs; but as he got within the Aztec influence he found more sullenness than favor. When he entered Mexico he was not resisted. The city seemed almost abandoned as his force made their way to the Spanish fort and entered its gates.

As a means of getting supplies, Cortés ordered the release of a brother of Montezuma, who at once used his liberty to plan an insurrection. An attack on the Spanish quarters followed, which Cortés sought to repel by sorties; but they gained little. The siege was so roughly pressed that Cortés urged Montezuma to present himself on the parapet and check the fierceness of the assault. The captive put on his robes of state and addressed the multitude; but he only became the target of their missiles, and was struck down by a stone.[1072] The condition of the Spaniards soon became perilous in the extreme. A parley with the chief of the Aztecs was of no avail; and Cortés resolved to cut his way along the shortest causeway from the city, to the mainland bordering the lake. In this he failed. Meanwhile a part of his force were endeavoring to secure the summit of a neighboring pyramid, from which the Mexicans had annoyed the garrison of the fort. Cortés joined in this attack, and it was successful. The defenders of the temples on its summit were all killed or hurled from the height, and Cortés was master of the spot.

Events followed quickly in this June of 1520. There was evidently a strong will in command of the Mexicans. The brother of Montezuma was a doughtier foe than the King had been. The temporary success on the pyramid had not diminished the anxiety of Cortés. Montezuma was now dying on his hands. The King had not recovered from the injuries which his own people had inflicted, and sinking spirits completed the work of the mob. On the 30th of June he died, at the age of forty-one, having been on the throne since 1503.[1073] Cortés had hoped for some turn of fortune from this event; but none came. He was more than ever convinced of the necessity of evacuating the city. Another sortie had failed as before; and the passage of the causeway was again planned for the evening of that day.[1074] The order of march, as arranged, included the whole Spanish force and about six thousand allies. Pontoons of a rough description were contrived for bridging the chasms in the causeway. As many jewels and gold as would not encumber them were taken, together with such prisoners of distinction as remained to them, besides the sick and wounded.

HELPS’S MAP.

This is the map given by Helps in his Spanish Conquest. One of the differences in the variety of maps which have been offered of the Valley of Mexico, to illustrate the conquest by Cortés, consists in the number and direction of the causeways. The description and the remains of the structures themselves have not sufficed to make investigators of one mind respecting them. Prescott (Kirk’s ed., vol. ii.) does not represent so many causeways as Helps does. The map in Bancroft (vol. i. p. 583) is still different in this respect. There is also a plan of the city and surrounding country in Cabajal’s México (vol. ii. p. 538); and two others have been elsewhere given in the present volume (pp. 364, 379).

A drizzling rain favored their retreat; but the Mexicans were finally aroused, and attacked their rear. A hundred or more Spaniards were cut off, and retreated to the fort, where they surrendered a few days later, and were sacrificed. The rest, after losses and much tribulation, reached the mainland. Nothing but the failure of the Mexicans to pursue the Spaniards, weakened as they were, saved Cortés from annihilation. The Aztecs were too busy with their successes; for forty Spaniards, not to speak of numerous allies, had been taken, and were to be immolated; and rites were to be performed over their own dead.

Cortés the next morning was marshalling the sorry crowd which was left of his army, when a new attack was threatened. His twelve hundred and fifty Spaniards and six thousand allies had been reduced respectively to five hundred and two thousand;[1075] and he was glad to make a temple, which was hard by, a place of refuge and defence. Here he had an opportunity to count his losses. His cannon and prisoners were all gone. Some of his bravest officers did not respond to his call. He could count but twenty-four of his three or four score of horses. After dark he resumed his march. His pursuers still worried him, and hunger weakened his men. He lost several horses at one point, and was himself badly wounded. Reaching a plain on the 7th of July, the Spaniards confronted a large force drawn up against them. Cortés had but seven muskets left, and no powder; so he trusted to pike and sabre. With these he rushed upon them; but the swarm of the enemy was too great. At last, however, making a dash with some horsemen at the native commander, who was recognized by his state and banner, the Mexican was hurled prostrate and killed, and the trophy captured. The spell was broken, and the little band of Spaniards and their allies hounded the craven enemy in every direction. This victory at Otumba (Otompan) was complete and astounding.

TREE OF TRISTE NOCHE.

This cut is borrowed from Harper’s Magazine, January, 1874, p. 172, and represents the remains of the tree under which Cortés and his followers gathered after that eventful night. There is another view of this tree in Tour du monde, 1862, p. 277.

The march was resumed; and not till within the Tlascalan borders was there any respite and rest. In the capital of his allies Cortés breathed freer. He learned, however, of misfortunes to detached parties of Spaniards which had been sent out from Villa Rica. He soon got some small supplies of ammunition and men from that seaport. Amid all this, Cortés himself succumbed to a fever from his wounds, and barely escaped death.

Meantime Cuitlahuatzin, the successful brother of Montezuma, had been crowned in Mexico, where a military rule (improved by what the Spaniards had taught them) was established. The new monarch sent ambassadors to try to win the Tlascalans from their fidelity to Cortés; but the scheme failed, and Cortés got renewed strength in the fast purpose of his allies. His prompt and defiant ambition again overcame the discontents among his own men, and induced him to take the field once more against the Tepeacans, enemies of the Tlascalans, who lived near by. It took about a month to subdue the whole province. Other strongholds of Aztec influence fell one by one. The prestige of the Spanish arms was rapidly re-established, and the Aztec forces went down before them here and there in detachments. New arrivals on the coast pronounced for Cortés, and two hundred men and twenty horses soon joined his army. The small-pox, which the Spaniards had introduced, speedily worked more disaster than the Spaniards, as it spread through the country; and among the victims of it was the new monarch of the Aztecs, leaving the throne open to the succession of Quauhtemotzin, a nephew and son-in-law of Montezuma.

CHARLES V.

Fac-simile of a woodcut of Charles V. in Pauli Jovii elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium, Basle, 1575, p. 365, and 1596, p. 240.

On the 30th of October, 1520, Cortés addressed his second letter to the Emperor Charles V. He and his adherents craved confirmation for his acts, and reinforcements. Other letters were despatched to Hispaniola and Jamaica for recruits and supplies. Some misfortunes prevented the prompt sailing of the vessel for Spain, and Cortés was enabled to join a supplemental letter to the Emperor. The vessels also carried away some of the disaffected, whom Cortés was not sorry to lose, now that others had joined him.

AUTOGRAPH OF CHARLES V.

Meanwhile Cortés had established among the Tepeacans a post of observation named Segura; and from this centre Sandoval made a successful incursion among the Aztec dependencies. Cortés himself was again at Tlascala, settling the succession of its government; for the small-pox had carried off Maxixcatzin, the firm friend of the Spaniards. Here Cortés set carpenters to work constructing brigantines, which he intended to carry to Tezcuco, on the Lake of Mexico, where it was now his purpose to establish the base of future operations against the Aztec capital. The opportune arrival of a ship at Villa Rica with supplies and materials of war was very helpful to him.

Cortés first animated all by a review of his forces, and then went forward with the advance toward Tezcuco. He encountered little opposition, and entered the town to find the inhabitants divided in their fears and sympathies. Many had fled toward Mexico, including the ruler who had supplanted the one given them by Cortés and Montezuma. Under the instigation of Cortés a new one was chosen whom he could trust.

CHARLES V.

Fac-simile of an engraving in Herrera, iii. 84. Cf. the full-length likeness given in Cumplido’s Mexican edition of Prescott’s Mexico, vol. iii., and various other portraits of the Emperor.

Cortés began his approach to Mexico by attacking and capturing, with great loss to the inhabitants, one of the lake towns; but the enemy, cutting a dike and flooding the place, forced the retirement of the invaders, who fell back to Tezcuco. Enough had been accomplished to cause many of the districts dependent on the Aztecs to send in embassies of submission; and Cortés found that he was daily gaining ground. Sandoval was sent back to Tlascala to convoy the now completed brigantines, which were borne in pieces on the shoulders of eight thousand carriers. Pending the launching of the fleet, Cortés conducted a reconnoissance round the north end of the lakes to the scene of his sorrowful night evacuation, hoping for an interview with an Aztec chief.

TOPOGRAPHY OF THE MEXICAN VALLEY.

This is the map given in Wilson’s New Conquest of Mexico, p. 390, in which he makes the present topography represent that of Cortés’ time, in opposition to the usual view that at the period of the Conquest the waters of the lake covered the parts here represented as marsh. The waters of Tezcuco are at present seven or eight feet (Prescott says four feet) below the level of the city, and Wilson contends that they did not in Cortés’ time much exceed in extent their present limits; and it is one of his arguments against Cortés’ representations of deep water about the causeways that such a level of the lake would have put the town of Tezcuco six or seven feet under water. Wilson gives his views on this point at length in his New Conquest, pp. 452-460. The map will be seen also to show the line of General Scott’s approach to the city in 1847. (Cf. Prof. Henry Coppée on the “Coincidences of the Conquests of Mexico, 1520-1847,” in the Journal of the Military Service Institution, March, 1884.) The modern city of Mexico lies remote by several miles from the banks of the lake which represents to-day the water commonly held to have surrounded the town in the days of the Conquest. The question of the shrinking of the lagunes is examined in Orozco y Berra’s Mémoire pour la carte hydrographique de la Vallée de Mexico, and by Jourdanet in his Influence de la pression de l’air sur la vie de l’homme, p. 486. A colored map prepared for this latter book was also introduced by Jourdanet in his edition of Sahagun (1880), where (p. xxviii) he again examines the question. From that map the one here presented was taken, and the marsh surrounding “Lac de Texcoco” marks the supposed limits of the lake in Montezuma’s time. Jourdanet’s map is called, “Carte hydrographique de la Vallée de Mexico d’après les travaux de la Commission de la Vallée en 1862, avec addition des anciennes limites du Lac de Texcoco.”

Humboldt in his Essai politique sur la Nouvelle Espagne, while studying this problem of the original bounds of the water, gives a map defining them as traced in 1804-1807; and this is reproduced in John Black’s translation of Humboldt’s Personal Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain, third edition, London, 1822. Humboldt gives accounts of earlier attempts to map the valley with something like accuracy, as was the case with the Lopez map of 1785. Siguenza’s map of the sixteenth century, though false, has successively supplied, through the publication of it which Alzate made in 1786, the geographical data of many more modern maps. Cf. the map in Cumplido’s edition of Prescott’s Mexico (1846), vol. iii., and the enumeration of maps of the valley given in Orozco y Berra’s Cartografia Mexicana, pp. 315-316.

A map of Mexico and the lake also appeared in Le petit atlas maritime (Paris, 1764); and this is given in fac-simile in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, xxi. 616, in connection with a translation of the Codex Ramirez by Henry Phillips, Jr.

There is reason to believe that the decrease in the waters had begun to be perceptible in the time of Cortés; and Humboldt traces the present subsidence to the destruction of neighboring forests. Bernal Diaz makes record of the changes observable within his recollection, and he wrote his account fifty years after the Conquest.

The geographers of the eighteenth century often made the waters of the valley flow into the Pacific. The map in the 1704 edition of Solis shows this; so do the maps of Bower and other English cartographers, as well as the map from Herrera on a later page (p. 392).

The inundations to which the city has been subjected (the most serious of which was in 1629), and the works planned for its protection from such devastations are the subject of a rare book by Cepeda and Carillo, Relacion universal del sitio en que esta fundada la ciudad de México (Mexico, 1637). Copies are found complete and incomplete. Cf. Carter-Brown, ii. 441; Leclerc, no. 1,095, complete, 400 francs, and no. 1,096, incomplete, 200 francs; Quaritch, incomplete, £10.

In this, however, he failed, and returned to Tezcuco. Then followed some successful fighting on the line of communication with the coast, which enabled Cortés to bring up safely some important munitions, besides two hundred soldiers, who had lately reached Villa Rica from the islands whither he had sent for help the previous autumn.

The Spanish leader now conducted another reconnoissance into the southern borders of the Mexican Valley,—a movement which overcame much opposition,—and selected Coyohuacan as a base of operations on that side against the Aztec city. After this he returned to Tezcuco, and was put to the necessity of quelling an insurrection, in which his own death had been planned.

At last the brigantines were launched. At the command of Cortés the allies mustered. On the 28th of April, 1521, the Spanish general counted his own countrymen, and found he had over nine hundred in all, including eighty-seven horsemen. He had three heavy guns, and fifteen smaller ones, which were mostly in the fleet. Cortés kept immediate charge of the brigantines, and allotted the main divisions of the army to Alvarado, Olid, and Sandoval. The land forces proceeded to occupy the approaches which the reconnoissances had indicated,—Alvarado at Tlacopan, Olid at Coyohuacan, on the westerly shores of the lake, and, later, Sandoval at Iztapalapan, on the eastern side. Each of these places commanded the entrance to causeways leading to the city. The land forces were no sooner in position than Cortés appeared with his fleet. The Aztecs attacked the brigantines with several hundred canoes; but Cortés easily overcame all, and established his naval supremacy. He then turned to assist Olid and Alvarado, who were advancing along their respective causeways; and the stronghold, Xoloc, at the junction of the causeway, was easily carried. Here the besiegers maintained themselves with an occasional fight, while Sandoval was sent to occupy Tepeyacac, which commanded the outer end of the northern causeway. This completed the investment. A simultaneous attack was now made from the three camps. The force from Xoloc alone succeeded in entering the city; but the advantage gained was lost, and Cortés, who was with this column, drew his forces back to camp. His success, however, was enough to impress the surrounding people, who were watching the signs; and various messengers came and offered the submission of their people to the Spaniards. The attacks were renewed on subsequent days; and little by little the torch was applied, and the habitable part of the town grew less and less. The lake towns as they submitted furnished flotillas, which aided the brigantines much in their incursions into the canals of the town. For a while the Mexicans maintained night communication across the lake for supplies; but the brigantines at last stopped this precarious traffic.

Alvarado on his side had made little progress; but the market of Tlatelulco was nearer him, and that was a point within the city which it was desirable to reach and fortify. Sandoval was joined to Alvarado, who increased the vigor of his assault, while Cortés again attacked on the other side. The movement failed, and the Mexicans were greatly encouraged. The Spaniards, from their camps, saw by the blaze of the illuminations on the temple tops the sacrifice of their companions who had been captured in the fight. The bonds that kept the native allies in subjection were becoming, under these reverses, more sensibly loosened day by day, and Cortés spared several detachments from his weakened force to raid in various directions to preserve the prestige of the Spanish power.

The attack was now resumed on a different plan. The fighting-men led the way and kept the Mexicans at bay; while the native auxiliaries razed every building as they went, leaving no cover for the Aztec marauders. The demolition extended gradually to the line of Alvarado’s approach, and communication was opened with him. This leader was now approaching the great market-place, Tlatelulco. By renewed efforts he gained it, only to lose it; but the next day he succeeded better, and formed a junction with Cortés. Not more than an eighth part of the city was now in the hands of its inhabitants; and here pestilence and famine were the Spaniards’ prompt allies.

MEXICO UNDER THE CONQUERORS.

This is the engraving given in the Nieuwe Weereld (1670) of Montanus, which was repeated in Ogilby’s America, and is familiar from reproductions elsewhere. It may be traced back as a sketch to the much less elaborate one given by Bordone in his Libro of 1528, later called his Isolario, which was accompanied by one of the earliest descriptions by a writer not a conqueror. Bancroft (Mexico, ii. 14) gives a small outline engraving of a similar picture, and recapitulates the authorities on the rebuilding of the city by Cortés. The Cathedral, however, was not begun till 1573, and was over sixty years in building (Ibid., iii. 173).

One of the most interesting of the early accounts, accompanied as it was with a plan of the town and lake, made part of the narrative of the “Anonymous Conqueror.” This picture has been reproduced by Icazbalceta in his Coleccion (i. 390) from the engraving in Ramusio, whence we derive our only knowledge of this anonymous writer. The Ramusio plan is also given on the next page.

The plate used in the 1572 edition of Porcacchi (p. 105) served for many successive editions. Another plan of the same year showing an oval lake surrounding the town, is found in Braun and Hogenberg’s Civitates orbis terrarum (Cologne, 1572), and of later dates, and the French edition, Théâtre des cités du monde (Brussels, 1574), i. 59. A similar outline characterizes the small woodcut (6×6 inches) which is found in Münster’s Cosmographia (1598), p. dccccxiiii.

Later views and plans appeared in Gottfriedt’s Newe Welt (1655); in Solis’s Conquista (1704), p. 261, reproduced in the English edition of 1724; in La Croix’ Algemeene Weereld Beschryving (1705); in Herrera (edition of 1728), p. 399; in Clavigero (1780), giving the lake and the town (copied in Verne’s De’couverte de la Terre, p. 248), and also a map of Anahuac, both reproduced in the London (1787) and Philadelphia (1817) editions, as well as in the Spanish edition published at Mexico in 1844; in Solis, edition of 1783 (Madrid), where the lake is given an indefinite extension; in Keating’s edition of Bernal Diaz, besides engraved plates by the Dutch publisher Vander Aa.

The account of Mexico in 1554 written by Francisco Cervantes Salazar, and republished with annotations by Icazbalceta in 1875 (Carter-Brown, i. 595) is helpful in this study of the ancient town. Cf. “Mexico et ses environs en 1554,” by L. Massbieau, in the Revue de géographie, October, 1878.

A descriptive book, Sitio, naturaleza y propriedades de la ciudad de México, by Dr. Diego Cisneros, published at Mexico in 1618, is become very rare. Rich in 1832 priced a copy at £6 6s.,—a great sum for those days (Sabin, vol. iv. no. 13,146; Carter-Brown, ii. 199).

Still the Aztec King, Quauhtemotzin, scorned to yield; and the slaughter went on from day to day, till finally, on the 13th of August, 1521, the end came. The royal Aztec was captured, trying to escape in a boat; and there was no one left to fight. Of the thousand Spaniards who had done the work about a tenth had succumbed; and probably something like the same proportion among the many thousand allies. The Mexican loss must have been far greater, perhaps several times greater.[1076] The Spaniards were no sooner in possession than quarrels began over the booty. Far less was found than was hoped for, and torture was applied, with no success, to discover the hiding-places. The captive prince was not spared this indignity. Cortés was accused of appropriating an undue share of what was found, and hot feelings for a while prevailed.

The conquest now had to be maintained by the occupation of the country; and the question was debated whether to build the new capital on the ruins of Mexico, or to establish it at Tezcuco or Coyohuacan. Cortés preferred the prestige of the traditional site, and so the new Spanish town rose on the ruins of the Aztec capital; the Spanish quarter being formed about the square of Tenochtitlan (known in the early books usually as Temixtitan), which was separated by a wide canal from the Indian settlement clustered about Tlatelulco. Two additional causeways were constructed, and the Aztec aqueduct was restored. Inducements were offered to neighboring tribes to settle in the city, and districts were assigned to them. Thus were hewers of wood and drawers of water abundantly secured. But Mexico never regained with the natives the dominance which the Aztecs had given it. Its population was smaller, and a similar decadence marked the fate of the other chief towns; Spanish rule and disease checked their growth. Even Tezcuco and Tlascala soon learned what it was to be the dependents of the conquerors.

Cortés speedily decided upon further conquests. The Aztec tribute-rolls told him of the comparative wealth of the provinces, and the turbulent spirits among his men were best controlled in campaigns. He needed powder, so he sent some bold men to the crater of Popocatepetl to get sulphur. They secured it, but did not repeat the experiment. Cortés also needed cannon. The Aztecs had no iron, but sufficient copper; and finding a tin mine, his craftsmen made a gun-metal, which soon increased his artillery to a hundred pieces.

Expeditions were now despatched hither and thither, and province after province succumbed. Other regions sent in their princes and chief men with gifts and words of submission. The reports which came back of the great southern sea opened new visions; and Cortés sent expeditions to find ports and build vessels; and thus Zacalula grew up. Revolts here and there followed the Spanish occupancy, but they were all promptly suppressed.

While all this was going on, Cortés had to face a new enemy. Fonseca, as patron of Velasquez, had taken occasion in the absence of the Emperor, attending to the affairs of his German domain, to order Cristóbal de Tapia from Hispaniola to take command in New Spain and to investigate the doings of Cortés. He arrived in December, 1521, with a single vessel at Villa Rica, and was guardedly received by Gonzalo de Alvarado, there in command. Tapia now despatched a messenger to Cortés, who replied with many blandishments, and sent Sandoval and others as a council to confer with Tapia, taking care to have among its members a majority of his most loyal adherents.

They met Dec. 12, 1521, and the conference lasted till Jan. 6, 1522. It resulted in a determination to hold the orders borne by Tapia in abeyance till the Emperor himself could be heard. Tapia protested in vain, and was quickly hustled out of the country. He was not long gone when new orders for him arrived,—this time under the sign-manual of the Emperor himself. This increased the perplexity; but Cortés won the messenger in his golden fashion. Shortly afterwards the same messenger set off for Spain, carrying back the letters with him. These occurrences did not escape notice throughout the country, and Cortés was put to the necessity of extreme measures to restore his prestige; while in his letter to the Emperor he threw the responsibility of his action upon the council, who felt it necessary, he alleged, to take the course they did to make good the gains which had already been effected for the Emperor. In a spirit of conciliation, however, Cortés released Narvaez, who had been confined at Villa Rica; and so in due time another enemy found his way to Spain, and joined the cabal against the Conqueror of Mexico.

CORTÉS.

Fac-simile of a woodcut in Pauli Jovii elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium (Basle, 1575), p. 348, and 1596, p. 229, called a portrait of Cortés.

The autograph follows one given by Prescott, revised ed., vol. iii. Autographs of his proper name, and of his title, Marques del Valle, are given in Cumplido’s edition of Prescott, vol. iii. An original autograph was noted for sale in Stevens (Bibliotheca geographica, no. 760), which is given in fac-simile in some of the illustrated copies of that catalogue. Prescott (vol. i. p. 447) mentions a banner, preserved in Mexico, though in rags, which Cortés is said to have borne in the Conquest. But compare Wilson’s New Conquest, p. 369.

In the spring (1522) Cortés was cheered by a report from the Audiencia of Santo Domingo, confirming his acts and promising intercession with the Emperor. To support this intercession, Cortés despatched to Spain some friends with his third letter, dated at Coyohuacan May 15, 1522. These agents carried also a large store of propitiatory treasure. Two of the vessels, which held most of it, were captured by French corsairs,[1077] and the Spanish gains enriched the coffers of Francis I. rather than those of Charles V. The despatches of Cortés, however, reached their destination, though Fonseca and the friends of Velasquez had conspired to prevent their delivery, and had even appropriated some part of the treasure which a third vessel had securely landed. Thus there were charges and countercharges, and Charles summoned a council to investigate. Cortés won. Velasquez, Fonseca, and Narvaez were all humiliated in seeing their great rival made, by royal command, governor and captain-general of New Spain.

Meanwhile Cortés, hearing of a proposed expedition under Garay to take possession of the region north of Villa Rica, conducted a force himself to seize, in advance, that province known as Pánuco, and to subjugate the Huastecs who dwelt there. This was done. The plunder proved small; but this disappointment was forgotten in the news which now, for the first time, reached Cortés of his late success in Spain. The whole country was jubilant over the recognition of his merit; and opportunely came embassies from Guatemala bringing costlier tributes than the Spaniards had ever seen before. This turned their attention to the south. There was apprehension that the Spaniards who were already at Panamá might sooner reach these rich regions, and might earlier find the looked-for passage from the Gulf to the south sea. To anticipate them, no time could be lost. So Alvarado, Olid, and Sandoval were given commands to push explorations and conquests southward and on either shore. Before the expeditions started, news came that Garay, arriving from Jamaica, had landed with a force at Pánuco to seize that region in the interests of the Velasquez faction. The mustered forces were at once combined under Cortés’ own lead, and marched against Garay,—Alvarado in advance. Before Cortés was ready to start, he was relieved from the necessity of going in person by the receipt of a royal order from Spain confirming him in the possession of Pánuco and forbidding Garay to occupy any of Cortés’ possessions. This order was hurriedly despatched to Alvarado; but it did not reach him till he had made some captives of the intruders. Garay readily assented to lead his forces farther north if restitution should be made to him of the captives and munitions which Alvarado had taken. This was not so easily done, for plunder in hand was doubly rich, and Garay’s own men preferred to enlist with Cortés. To compose matters Garay went to Mexico, where Cortés received him with ostentatious kindness, and promised him assistance in his northern conquests. In the midst of Cortés’ hospitality his guest sickened and died, and was buried with pomp.

While Garay was in Mexico, his men at Pánuco, resenting the control of Garay’s son, who had been left in charge of them, committed such ravages on the country that the natives rose on them, and were so rapidly annihilating them that Alvarado, who had left, was sent back to check the outbreak. He encountered much opposition; but conquered as usual, and punished afterward the chief ringleaders with abundant cruelty. Such of Garay’s men as would, joined the forces of Cortés, while the rest were sent back to Jamaica.

The thoughts of Cortés were now turned to his plan of southern exploration, and early in December Alvarado was on his way to Guatemala.[1078] Desperate fighting and the old success attended Cortés’ lieutenant, and the Quiché army displayed their valor in vain in battle after battle. It was the old story of cavalry and arquebusiers. As Alvarado approached Utatlan, the Quiché capital, he learned of a plot to entrap him in the city, which was to be burned about his ears. By a counterplot he seized the Quiché nobles, and burned them and their city. By the aid of the Cakchiquels he devastated the surrounding country. Into the territory of this friendly people he next marched, and was received royally by King Sinacam in his city of Patinamit (Guatemala), and was soon engaged with him in an attack on his neighbors, the Zutugils, who had lately abetted an insurrection among Sinacam’s vassals. Alvarado beat them, of course, and established a fortified post among them after they had submitted, as gracefully as they could. With Quichés and Cakchiquels now in his train, Alvarado still went on, burned towns and routed the country’s defenders, till, the rainy season coming on, he withdrew his crusaders and took up his quarters once more at Patinamit, late in July, 1524. From this place he sent despatches to Cortés, who forwarded two hundred more Spanish soldiers for further campaigns.

The Spanish extortions produced the usual results. The Cakchiquels turned under the abuse, deserted their city, and prepared for a campaign. The Spaniards found them abler foes than any yet encountered. The Cakchiquels devastated the country on which Alvarado depended for supplies, and the Spaniards found themselves reduced to great straits. It was only after receiving reinforcements sent by Cortés that Alvarado was enabled to push his conquests farther, and possess himself of the redoubtable fortress of Mixco and successfully invade the Valley of Zacatepec.

The expedition to Honduras was intrusted to Cristóbal de Olid, and started about a month after Alvarado’s to Guatemala. Olid was given a fleet; and a part of his instructions was to search for a passage to the great south sea. He sailed from the port now known as Vera Cruz on the 11th of January, 1524, and directed his course for Havana, where he was to find munitions and horses, for the purchase of which agents had already been sent thither by Cortés. While in Cuba the blandishments of Velasquez had worked upon Olid’s vanity, and when he sailed for Honduras he was harboring thoughts of defection. Not long after he landed he openly announced them, and gained the adherence of most of his men. Cortés, who had been warned from Cuba of Olid’s purpose, sent some vessels after him, which were wrecked. Thus Casas, their commander, and his men fell into Olid’s hands. After an interval, an opportunity offering, the captive leader conspired to kill Olid. He wounded and secured him, brought him to a form of trial, and cut off his head. Leaving a lieutenant to conduct further progress, Casas started to go to Mexico and make report to Cortés.

GUATEMALA AND HONDURAS.

Following the map given in Ruge’s, Zeitalter der Entdeckungen, p. 391. Cf. map in Fanshawe’s Yucatan.

Meanwhile, with a prescience of the mischief brewing, and impelled by his restless nature, Cortés had determined to march overland to Honduras; and in the latter part of October, 1524, he set out. He started with great state; but the difficulties of the way made his train a sorry sight as they struggled through morass after morass, stopped by river after river, which they were under the necessity of fording or bridging. All the while their provisions grew less and less. To add to the difficulties, some Mexican chieftains, who had been taken along as hostages for the security of Mexico, had conspired to kill Cortés, and then to march with their followers back to Mexico as deliverers. The plot was discovered, and the leaders were executed.[1079] Some of the towns passed by the army had been deserted by their inhabitants, without leaving any provisions behind. Guides which they secured ran away. On they went, however, hardly in a condition to confront Olid, should he appear, and they were now approaching his province. At last some Spaniards were met, who told them of Casas’ success; and the hopes of Cortés rose. He found the settlers at Nito, who had been decimated by malaria, now engaged in constructing a vessel in which to depart. His coming cheered them; and a ship opportunely appearing in the harbor with provisions, Cortés purchased her and her lading. He then took steps to move the settlement to a more salubrious spot. Using the newly acquired vessel, he explored the neighboring waters, hoping to find the passage to the south sea; and making some land expeditions, he captured several pueblos, and learned, from a native of the Pacific coast whom he fell in with, that Alvarado was conducting his campaign not far away. Finally, he passed on to Trujillo, where he found the colony of Olid’s former adherents, and confirmed the dispositions which Casas had made, while he sent vessels to Cuba and Jamaica for supplies.

At this juncture Cortés got bad news from Mexico. Cabal and anti-cabal among those left in charge of the government were having their effect. When a report reached them of the death of Cortés and the loss of his army, it was the signal for the bad spirits to rise, seize the government, and apportion the estates of the absentees. The most steadfast friend of Cortés—Zuazo—was sent off to Cuba, whence he got the news to Cortés by letter. After some hesitation and much saying of Masses, Cortés appointed a governor for the Honduras colony; and sending Sandoval with his forces overland, he embarked himself to go by sea. Various mishaps caused his ship to put back several times. Discouraged at last, and believing there was a divine purpose in keeping him in Honduras for further conquest, he determined to remain a while, and sent messengers instead to Mexico. Runners were also sent after Sandoval to bring him back.

Cortés now turned his attention to the neighboring provinces; and one after another he brought them into subjection, or gained their respect by interfering to protect them from other parties of marauding Spaniards. He had already planned conquests farther south, and Sandoval had received orders to march, when a messenger from Mexico brought the exhortations of his friends for his return to that city. Taking a small force with him, including Sandoval, he embarked in April, 1526. After being tempest-tossed and driven to Cuba, he landed late in May near Vera Cruz, and proceeded in triumph to his capital.

Cortés’ messenger from Honduras had arrived in good time, and had animated his steadfast adherents, who succeeded very soon in overthrowing the usurper Salazar and restoring the Cortés government. Then followed the request for Cortés’ return, and in due time his arrival. The natives vied with each other in the consideration which they showed to Malinche, as Cortés was universally called by them. Safe in their good wishes, Cortés moved by easy stages toward Mexico. Everybody was astir with shout and banner as he entered the city itself. He devoted himself at once to re-establishing the government and correcting abuses.

Meanwhile the enemies of Cortés at Madrid had so impressed the Emperor that he ordered a judge, Luis Ponce de Leon, to proceed to Mexico and investigate the charges against the Governor, and to hold power during the suspension of Cortés’ commission. Cortés received him loyally, and the transfer of authority was duly made,—Cortés still retaining the position of captain-general. Before any charges against Cortés could be heard, Ponce sickened and died, July 20, 1526; and his authority descended to Marcos de Aguilar, whom he had named as successor. He too died in a short time; and Cortés had to resist the appeals of his friends, who wished him to reassume the governorship and quiet the commotions which these sudden changes were producing. Meanwhile the enemies of Cortés were actively intriguing in Spain, and Estrada received a royal decree to assume alone the government, which with two others he had been exercising since the death of Aguilar. The patience of Cortés and his adherents was again put to a test when the new ruler directed the exile of Cortés from the city. Estrada soon saw his mistake, and made advances for a reconciliation, which Cortés accepted.

But new developments were taking place on the coast. The Emperor had taken Pánuco out of Cortés’ jurisdiction by appointing Nuño de Guzman to govern it, with orders to support Ponce if Cortés should resist that royal agent. Guzman did not arrive on the coast till May 20, 1527, when he soon, by his acts, indicated his adherence to the Velasquez party, and a disposition to encroach upon the bounds of New Spain. He was forced to deal with Cortés as captain-general; and letters far from conciliatory in character passed from Guzman to the authorities in Mexico. Estrada had found it necessary to ask Cortés to conduct a campaign against his ambitious neighbor; but Cortés felt that he could do more for himself and New Spain in the Old, and so prepared to leave the country and escape from the urgency of those of his partisans who were constantly trying to embroil him with Estrada. A letter from the new President of the Council of the Indies urging his coming, helped much to the determination. He collected what he could of treasure, fabric, and implement to show the richness of the country. A great variety of animals, representatives of the various subjugated peoples, and a showy train of dependents, among them such conspicuous characters as Sandoval and Tapia, with native princes and chieftains, accompanied him on board the vessels.

AUTOGRAPH OF SANDOVAL.

After a fac-simile in Cabajal, México, ii. 686.

Cortés, meanwhile, was ignorant of what further mischief his enemies had done in Spain. The Emperor had appointed a commission (audiencia) to examine the affairs of New Spain, and had placed Guzman at the head. It had full power to assume the government and regulate the administration. In December, 1528, and January, 1529, all the members assembled at Mexico. The jealous and grasping quality of their rule was soon apparent. The absence of Cortés in Spain threatened the continuance of their power; for reports had reached Mexico of the enthusiasm which attended his arrival in Spain. They accordingly despatched messengers to the Spanish court renewing the charges against Cortés, and setting forth the danger of his return to Mexico. Alvarado and other friends of Cortés protested in vain, and had to look on and see, under one pretext or another, all sorts of taxes and burdens laid upon the estates of the absent hero. He was also indicted in legal form for every vice and crime that any one might choose to charge him with; and the indictments stood against him for many years.

Guzman was soon aware of the smouldering hatred which the rule of himself and his associate had created; and he must have had suspicions of the representations of his rapacity and cruelty which were reaching Madrid from his opponents. To cover all iniquities with the splendor of conquest, he gathered a formidable army and marched to invade the province of Jalisco.

SANDOVAL.

Fac-simile of an engraving in Herrera, ii. 32. It is dressed up in Cabajal’s México, ii. 254.

Cortés, with his following, had landed at Palos late in 1528, and was under the necessity, a few days later, of laying the body of Sandoval—worn out with the Honduras campaign—in the vaults of La Rabida. It was a sad duty for Cortés, burdened with the grief that his young lieutenant could not share with him the honors now in store, as he made his progress to Toledo, where the Court then was. He was received with unaccustomed honor and royal condescensions,—only the prelude to substantial grants of territory in New Spain, which he was asked to particularize and describe. He was furthermore honored with the station and title of Marqués del Valle de Oajaca. He was confirmed as captain-general; but his reinstatement as governor was deferred till the reports of the new commission in New Spain should be received. He was, however, assured of liberty to make discoveries in the south sea, and to act as governor of all islands and parts he might discover westward.

CORTÉS.

Fac-simile of an engraving in Herrera, ii. 1. There is also a portrait which hangs, or did hang, in the series of Viceroys in the Museo at Mexico. This was engraved for Don Antonio Uguina, of Madrid; and from his engraving the picture given second by Prescott is copied. Engravings of a picture ascribed to Titian are given in Townsend’s translation of Solis (London, 1724) and in the Madrid edition of Solis (1783). Cf. H. H. Bancroft, Mexico, i. 39, note. The Spanish translation of Clavigero, published in Mexico in 1844, has a portrait; and one “after Velasquez” is given in Laborde’s Voyage pittoresque, vol. iv., and in Jules Verne’s Découverte de la Terre.

A small copperplate representing Cortés in armor, with an uplifted finger and a full beard (accompanied by a brief sketch of his career) is given in Select Lives collected out of A. Thevet, Englished by I. S. (Cambridge, 1676), which is a section of a volume, Prosopographia (Cambridge, 1676), an English translation of Thevet’s Collection of Lives. The copper may be the same used in the French original.

The wife of Cortés, whom he had left in Cuba, had joined him in Mexico after the conquest, and had been received with becoming state. Her early decease, after a loftier alliance would have become helpful to his ambition, had naturally raised a suspicion among Cortés’ traducers that her death had been prematurely hastened.

CORTÉS’ ARMOR.

Copied from an engraving (in Ruge’s Das Zeitalter der Entdeckungen, p. 405) of the original in the Museum at Madrid. Wilson refers to some plate armor in the Museum at Mexico, which he, of course, thinks apocryphal (New Conquest, p. 444).

He had now honors sufficient for any match among the rank of grandees; and a few days after he was ennobled he was married, as had been earlier planned, to the daughter of the late Conde de Aguilar and niece of the Duque de Béjar,—both houses of royal extraction.

Cortés now prepared to return to Mexico with his new titles. He learned that the Emperor had appointed a new audiencia to proceed thither, and it promised him better justice than he had got from the other. The Emperor was not, however, satisfied as yet that the presence of Cortés in Mexico was advisable at the present juncture, and he ordered him to stay; but the decree was too late, and Cortés, with a great retinue, had already departed. He landed at Vera Cruz, in advance of the new judge, July 15, 1530.

His reception was as joyous as it had been four years before; and though an order had reached him forbidding his approach within ten leagues of Mexico till the new audiencia should arrive, the support of his retinue compelled him to proceed to Tezcuco, where he awaited its coming, while he was put in the interim to not a little hazard and inconvenience by the efforts of the Guzman government to deprive him of sustenance and limit his intercourse with the natives.

Near the end of the year the new Government arrived,—or all but its president, Fuenleal, for he was the Bishop of Santo Domingo, whom the others had been ordered to take on board their vessel on the way; but stress of weather had prevented their doing this. The Bishop did not join them till September. In Mexico they took possession of Cortés’ house, which they had been instructed to appropriate at an appraisement.

AUTOGRAPH OF FUENLEAL
(Episcopus Sancti Dominici).

The former Government was at once put on trial, and judgment was in most cases rendered against them, so that their property did not suffice to meet the fines imposed. Cortés got a due share of what they were made to disgorge, in restitution of his own losses through them. Innumerable reforms were instituted, and the natives received greater protection than ever before.

Guzman, meanwhile, was on his expedition toward the Pacific coast, conducting his rapacious and brutal conquest of Nueva Galicia. He refused to obey the call of the new audiencia, while he despatched messengers to Mexico to protect, if possible, his interests. By them also he forwarded his own statement of his case to the Emperor. Cortés, vexed at Guzman’s anticipation of his own intended discoveries toward the Pacific, sent a lieutenant to confront him; but Guzman was wily enough to circumvent the lieutenant, seized him, and packed him off to Mexico with scorn and assurance.

MEXICO AND ACAPULCO.

Fac-simile of a map in Herrera, i. 408.

It was his last hour of triumph. His force soon dwindled; his adherents deserted him; his misdeeds had left him no friends; and he at last deserted the remnant of his army, and starting for Pánuco, turned aside to Mexico on the way. He found in the city a new régime. Antonio de Mendoza had been sent out as viceroy, and to succeed Fuenleal at the same time as president of the audiencia. He had arrived at Vera Cruz in October, 1535. His rule was temperate and cautious. Negroes, who had been imported into the country in large numbers as slaves, plotted an insurrection: but the Viceroy suppressed it; and if there was native complicity in the attempt, it was not proved. The Viceroy had received from his predecessors a source of trial and confusion in the disputed relations which existed between the civil rulers and the Captain-General. There were endless disputes with the second audiencia, and disagreements continued to exist with the Viceroy, about the respective limits of the powers of the two as derived from the Emperor.

Cortés had been at great expense in endeavoring to prosecute discovery in the Pacific, and he had the vexation of seeing his efforts continually embarrassed by the new powers. Previous to his departure for Spain he had despatched vessels from Tehuantepec to the Moluccas to open traffic with the Asiatic Indies; but the first audiencia had prevented the despatch of a succoring expedition which Cortés had planned. On his return to New Spain the Captain-General had begun the construction of new vessels both at Tehuantepec and at Acapulco; but the second audiencia interfered with his employment of Indians to carry his material to the coast. He however contrived to despatch two vessels up the coast under Hurtado de Mendoza, which left in May, 1532. They had reached the coast to the north, where Guzman was marauding, who was glad of the opportunity of thwarting the purpose of his rival. He refused the vessels the refuge of a harbor, and they were subsequently lost. Cortés now resolved to give his personal attention to these sea explorations, and proceeding to Tehuantepec, he superintended the construction of two vessels, which finally left port Oct. 29, 1533. They discovered Lower California. Afterward one of the vessels was separated from the other, and fell in distress into the hands of Guzman while making a harbor on the coast. The other ship reached Tehuantepec. Cortés appealed to the audiencia, who meted equal justice in ordering Guzman to surrender the vessel, and in commanding Cortés to desist from further exploration. An appeal to the Emperor effected little, for it seems probable that the audiencia knew what support it had at court. Cortés next resolved to act on his own responsibility and take command in person of a third expedition.

ACAPULCO.[1080]

So, in the winter of 1534-1535, he sent some vessels up the coast, and led a land force in the same direction. Guzman fled before him. Cortés joined his fleet at the port where Guzman had seized his ship on the earlier voyage, and embarked. Crossing to the California peninsula, he began the settlement of a colony on its eastern shore. He left the settlers there, and returned to Acapulco to send forward additional supplies and recruits.

CORTÉS.

This follows a sketch of the picture, in the Hospital of Jesus at Mexico, which is given in Charton’s Voyageurs, iii. 359. Prescott gives an engraving after a copy then in his own possession. The picture in the Hospital is also said to be a copy of one taken in Spain a few years before the death of Cortés, during his last visit. The original is not known to exist. The present descendants of the Conqueror, the family of the Duke of Monteleone in Italy, have only a copy of the one at Mexico. Another copy, made during General Scott’s occupation of the city, is in the gallery of the Pennsylvania Historical Society (Catalogue, no. 130). The upper part of the figure is reproduced in Carbajal’s Historia de México, ii. 12; and it is also given entire in Cumplido’s edition of Prescott’s Mexico, vol. iii.

At this juncture the new Viceroy had reached Mexico; and it was not long before he began to entertain schemes of despatching fleets of discovery, and Cortés found a new rival in his plans. The Captain-General got the start of his rival, and sent out a new expedition from Acapulco under Francisco de Ulloa; but the Viceroy gave orders to prevent other vessels following, and his officers seized one already at sea, which chanced to put into one of the upper ports. Cortés could endure such thraldom no longer, and early in 1540 he left again for Spain to plead his interests with the Emperor. He never saw the land of his conquest again.

We left Guzman for a while in Mexico, where Mendoza not unkindly received him, as one who hated Cortés as much or more than he did. Guzman was bent on escaping, and had ordered a vessel to be ready on the coast. He was a little too late, however. The Emperor had sent a judge to call him to account, and Guzman suddenly found this evil genius was in Mexico. The judge put him under arrest and marched him to prison. A trial was begun; but it dragged along, and Guzman sent an appeal forward to the Council for the Indies, in which he charged Cortés with promoting his persecution. He was in the end remanded to Spain, where he lingered out a despised life for a few years, with a gleam of satisfaction, perhaps, in finding, some time after, that Cortés too had found a longer stay in New Spain unprofitable.

CORTÉS MEDAL.

This follows the engraving in Ruge’s Das Zeitalter der Entdeckungen (p. 361) of a specimen in the Royal Cabinet at Berlin. The original is of the same size.

Cortés had reached Spain in the early part of 1540, and had been received with honor by the Court; but when he began to press for a judgment that might restore his losses and rehabilitate him in his self-respect, he found nothing but refusal and procrastination. He asked to return to Mexico, but found he could not. With a reckless aim he joined an expedition against Algiers; but the ship on which he embarked was wrecked, and he only saved himself by swimming, losing the choicest of his Mexican jewels, which he carried on his person. Then again he memorialized the Emperor for a hearing and award, but was disregarded. Later he once more appealed, but was still unheard. Again he asked permission to return to New Spain. This time it was granted; but before he could make the final preparations, he sank under his burdens, and at a village near Seville Cortés died on the 2d of December, 1547, in his sixty-second year.[1081]

[CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE DOCUMENTARY SOURCES OF MEXICAN HISTORY.]

MR. H. H. BANCROFT, in speaking of the facilities which writers of Spanish American history now have in excess of those enjoyed by the historian of thirty years ago, claims that in documentary evidence there are twenty papers for his use in print to-day for one then.[1082] These are found in part in the great Coleccion of Pacheco and others mentioned in the Introduction. The Mexican writer Joaquin Garcia Icazbalceta (born 1825) made a most important contribution in the two volumes of a Coleccion de documentos para la historia de México which passes by his name and which appeared respectively in 1858 and 1866.[1083] He found in Mexico few of the papers which he printed, obtaining them chiefly from Spain.

Of great interest among those which he gives is the Itinerario of Grijalva, both in the Italian and Spanish text.[1084] Of Cortés himself there are in this publication various letters not earlier made public. The quarrel between him and Velasquez is illustrated by other papers. Here also we find what is mentioned elsewhere as “De rebus gestis Cortesii” printed as a “Vida de Cortés,” and attributed to C. Calvet de Estrella. The recital of the so-called “Anonymous Conqueror,” held by some to be Francisco de Terrazas, is translated from Ramusio (the original Spanish is not known), with a fac-simile of the plan of Mexico.[1085] There is also the letter from the army of Cortés to the Emperor; and in the second volume various other papers interesting in connection with Cortés’ career, including the memorial of Luis de Cárdenas, etc. Two other papers have been recognized as important. One of these in the first volume is the Historia de los Indios de Nueva España of Fray Toribio Motolinia, accompanied by a Life of the Father by Ramirez, with a gathering of bibliographical detail. Toribio de Benavente—Motolinia was a name which he took from a description of him by the natives—had come over with the Franciscans in 1523. He was a devoted, self-sacrificing missionary; but he proved that his work did not quiet all the passions, for he became a violent opponent of Las Casas’ views and measures.[1086] His labors took him the length and breadth of the land; his assiduity acquired for him a large knowledge of the Aztec tongue and beliefs; and his work, besides describing institutions of this people, tells of the success and methods secured or adopted by himself and his companions in effecting their conversion to the faith of the conquerors. Robertson used a manuscript copy of the work, and Obadiah Rich procured a copy for Prescott, who ventured the assertion, when he wrote, that it had so little of popular interest that it would never probably be printed.[1087]

Bancroft[1088] calls the Relacion of Andrés de Tápia one of the most valuable documents of the early parts of the Conquest. It ends with the capture of Narvaez; recounting the antecedent events, however, with “uneven completeness.” It is written warmly in the interests of Cortés. Icazbalceta got what seemed to be the original from the Library of the Academy of History in Madrid, and printed it in his second volume (p. 554). It was not known to Prescott, who quotes it at second hand in Gomara.[1089]

The next most important collection is that published in Mexico from 1852 to 1857,[1090] under the general title of Documentos para la historia de México. This collection of four series, reckoned variously in nineteen or twenty-one volumes, is chiefly derived from Mexican sources, and is largely illustrative of the history of northwestern Mexico, and in general concerns Mexican history of a period posterior to the Conquest.

There have been two important series of documents published and in part unearthed by José Fernando Ramirez, who became Minister of State under Maximilian. The first of these is the testimony at the examination of the charges which were brought against Pedro de Alvarado, and some of those made in respect to Nuño de Guzman,—Procesos de residencia,[1091] which was published in Mexico in 1847;[1092] the other set of documents pertain to the trial of Cortés himself. Such of these as were found in the Mexican Archives were edited by Ignacio L. Rayon under the title of Archivo Mexicano; Documentos para la historia de México, and published in the city of Mexico in 1852-1853, in two volumes. At a later day (1867-1868) Ramirez discovered in the Spanish Archives other considerable portions of the same trial, and these have been printed in the Coleccion de documentos inéditos de las Indias, vols. xxvi.-xxix.

The records of the municipality of Mexico date from March 8, 1524, and chronicle for a long time the sessions as held in Cortés’ house; and are particularly interesting, as Bancroft says,[1093] after 1524, when we no longer have Cortés’ own letters to follow, down to 1529. Harrisse has told us what he found in the repositories of Italy, particularly at Venice, among the letters sent to the Senate during this period by the Venetian ambassadors at Madrid.[1094] Three volumes have so far been published of a Coleccion de documentos para la historia de Costa-Rica at San José de Costa-Rica, under the editing of León Fernández, which have been drawn from the Archives of the Indies and from the repositories in Guatemala. A few letters of Alvarado and other letters of the Conquest period are found in the Coleccion de documentos antiguous de Guatemala published at Guatemala in 1857.[1095]

No more voluminous contributor to the monographic and documentary history of Mexico can be named than Carlos Maria de Bustamante. There will be occasion in other connections to dwell upon particular publications, and some others are of little interest to us at present, referring to periods as late as the present century. Bustamante was a Spaniard, but he threw himself with characteristic energy into a heated advoracy of national Mexican feelings; and this warmly partisan exhibition of himself did much toward rendering the gathering of his scattered writings very difficult, in view of the enemies whom he made and of their ability to suppress obnoxious publications when they came into power. Most of these works date from 1812 to 1850, and when collected make nearly or quite fifty volumes, though frequently bound in fewer.[1096] The completest list, however, is probably that included in the enumeration of authorities prefixed by Bancroft to his Central America and Mexico, which shows not only the printed works of Bustamante, but also the autograph originals,—which, Bancroft says, contain much not in the published works.[1097] Indeed, these lists show an extremely full equipment of the manuscript documentary stores relating to the whole period of Mexican history,[1098] including a copy of the Archivo general de México, as well as much from the catalogues of José Maria Andrade and José Fernando Ramirez, records of the early Mexican councils, and much else of an ecclesiastical and missionary character not yet put in print.[1099]

Of particular value for the documents which it includes is the Historia de la fundacion y discurso de la provincia de Santiago de México, de la orden de predicadores, por las vidas de sus varones insignes y casos notables de Nueva España, published in Madrid in 1596.[1100] The author, Davilla Padilla, was born in Mexico in 1562 of good stock; he became a Dominican in 1579, and died in 1604. His opportunities for gathering material were good, and he has amassed a useful store of information regarding the contact of the Spanish and the Indians, and the evidences of the national traits of the natives. His book has another interest, in that we find in it the earliest mention of the establishment of a press in Mexico.[1101]

One of the earliest of the modern collections of documents and early monographs is the Historiadores primitivos de las Indias occidentales of Andres Gonzales de Barcia Carballido y Zuniga (known usually as Barcia), published at Madrid in 1749 in three volumes folio, and enriched with the editor’s notes. The sections were published separately; and it was not till after the editor’s death (1743) that they were grouped and put out collectively with the above distinctive title. In this form the collection is rare, and it has been stated that not over one or two hundred copies were so gathered.[1102]

First among all documents respecting the Conquest are the letters sent by Cortés himself to the Emperor; and of these a somewhat detailed bibliographical account is given in the Notes following this Essay, as well as an examination of the corrective value of certain other contemporaneous and later writers.

[NOTES.]

A. The Letters of Cortés.—I. The Lost First Letter, July 10, 1519. The series of letters which Cortés sent to the Emperor is supposed to have begun with one dated at Vera Cruz in July, 1519, which is now lost, but which Barcia and Wilson suppose to have been suppressed by the Council of the Indies at the request of Narvaez. There are contemporaneous references to show that it once existed. Cortés himself mentions it in his second letter, and Bernal Diaz implies that it was not shown by Cortés to his companions. Gomara mentions it, and is thought to give its purport in brief. Thinking that Charles V. may have carried it to Germany, Robertson caused the Vienna Archives to be searched, but without avail; though it has been the belief that this letter existed there at one time, and another sent with it is known to be in those Archives. Prescott caused thorough examinations of the repositories of London, Paris, and Madrid to be made,—equally without result.

Fortunately the same vessel took two other letters, one of which we have. This was addressed by the justicia y regimiento of La Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz, and was dated July 10, 1519. It was discovered, by Robertson’s agency, in the Imperial Library at Vienna. It rehearses the discoveries of Córdoba and Grijalva, and sustains the views of Cortés, who charged Velasquez with being incompetent and dishonest. This letter is sometimes counted as the first of the series; for though it was not written by Cortés, he is thought to have inspired it.[1103]

The other letter is known only through the use of it which contemporary writers made. It was from some of the leading companions in arms of Cortés, who, while they praised their commander, had something to say of others not quite to the satisfaction of Cortés. The Conqueror, it is intimated, intrigued to prevent its reaching the Emperor,—which may account for its loss. Las Casas and Tapia both mention it.[1104]

Beside the account given in Gomara of Cortés’ early life and his doings in the New World up to the time of his leaving Cuba in 1519, there is a contemporary narrative, quite in Cortés’ interest, of unknown authorship, which was found by Muñoz at Simancas.[1105] The Latin version is called “De rebus gestis Ferdinandi Cortesii;” but it is called “Vida de Hernan Cortés” in the Spanish rendering which is given by Icazbalceta in his Coleccion de documentos, i. 309-357.[1106]

A publication of Peter Martyr at Basle in 1521 is often taken as a substitute for the lost first epistle of Cortés. This is the De nuper sub D. Carolo repertis insulis ... Petri Martyris enchiridion, which gives a narrative of the expeditions of Grijalva and Cortés, as a sort of supplement to what Peter Martyr had written on the affairs of the Indies in his Three Decades. It was afterward included in his Basle edition of 1533 and in the Paris Extraict of 1532.[1107]

Harrisse[1108] points out an allusion to the expedition of Cortés and a description of those of Córdoba and Grijalva, in Ein Auszug ettlicher Sendbrieff ... von wegen einer new gefunden Inseln, published at Nuremberg in March, 1520;[1109] and Harrisse supposes the information is derived from Peter Martyr.[1110] Bancroft[1111] points out a mere reference in a publication of 1522,—Translationuss hispanischer Sprach, etc.

II. The Second Letter, Oct. 30, 1520. We possess four early editions of this,—two Spanish (1, 2) and one Latin (3), and one Italian (4).

1. The earliest Spanish edition was published at Seville Nov. 8, 1522, as Carta de relaciō, having twenty-eight leaves, in gothic type.[1112]

2. The second Spanish edition, Carta de relacion, was printed at Saragossa in 1524. It is in gothic letter, twenty-eight leaves, and has a cut of Cortés before Charles V. and his Court, of which a reduced fac-simile is herewith given.[1113]

CORTÉS’ GULF OF MEXICO.

This fac-simile follows the reproduction given by Stevens in his American Bibliographer, p. 86, and in his Notes, etc., pl. iv. Dr. Kohl published in the Zeitschrift für allgemeine Erdkunde, neue Folge, vol. xv., a paper on the “Aelteste Geschichte der Entdeckung und Erforschung des Golfs von Mexico durch die Spanier von 1492 bis 1543.” Cf. also Oscar Peschel’s Zeitalter der Entdeckungen (1858), chap. vii., and Ruge’s Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen, p. 355.

3. The first Latin edition was published in folio at Nuremberg, in August, 1524, in roman type, with marginal notes in gothic, and was entitled: Præclara Ferdinādi Cortesii de noua maris Oceani Hypania narratio. It was the work of Pierre Savorgnanus.[1114]

TITLE OF THE LATIN CORTÉS, 1524.—REDUCED.

ARMS, ON THE REVERSE OF TITLE, OF THE LATIN CORTÉS, 1524.

CLEMENT VII.

Fac-simile of a cut in the Latin Cortés of 1524. It was this Pope who was so delighted with the Indian jugglers sent to Rome by Cortés. The Conqueror also made His Holiness other more substantial supplications for his favor, which resulted in Cortés receiving plenary indulgence for his and his companions’ sins (Prescott, iii. 299).

4. The Italian edition, La preclara narratione di Ferdinando Cortese della Nuova Hispagna del Mare Oceano ... per Nicolo Liburnio con fidelta... tradotta, was printed at Venice in 1524. It follows the Latin version of Savorgnanus, and includes also the third letter.

This edition has a new engraving of the map in the Nuremberg edition, though Quaritch and others have doubted if such a map belongs to it. Leclerc (no. 151) chronicles copies with and without the map.[1115] An abstract of the second letter in Italian, Noue de le Isole et Terra Ferma nouamente trouate, had already appeared two years earlier, in 1522, at Milan.[1116]

There were other contemporary abstracts of this letter. Sigmund Grimm, of Augsburg, is said to be the author of one, published about 1522 or 1523, called Ein schöne newe Zeytung, so kayserlich Mayestet auss India yetz newlich zūckommen seind. It is cited in Harrisse and the Bibliotheca Grenvilliana; and Ternaux (no. 5) is thought to err in assigning the date of 1520 to it, as if printed in Augsburg. Of about the same date is another described by Sabin (vol. iv. no. 16,952) as printed at Antwerp, and called Tressacree Imperiale et Catholique Mageste ... eust nouvelles des marches ysles et terre ferme occeanes. This seems to be based, according to Brunet, Supplément (vol. i. col. 320), on the first and second letters, beginning with the departure, in 1519, from Vera Cruz, and ending with the death of Montezuma.[1117]

The second letter forms part of various collected editions, as follows:—

In Spanish. Bancroft (Mexico, i. 543) notes the second and third letters as being published in the Spanish Thesóro de virtudes in 1543.

Barcia’s Historiadores primitivos (1749); also edited by Enrique de Vedia, Madrid, 1852-1853.

Historia de Nueva España, escrita por su esclarecido Conquistador Hernan Cortés, aumentada con otros documentos y notas por Don Francisco Antonio Lorenzana, arzobispo de México, Mexico, 1770. This important work, embracing the second, third, and fourth letters, has a large view of the great temple of Mexico, a map of New Spain,[1118] and thirty-one plates of a hieroglyphic register of the tributaries of Montezuma,—the same later reproduced in better style by Kingsborough. Lorenzana was born in 1722, and rising through the gradations of his Church, and earning a good name as Bishop of Puebla, was made Archbishop of Toledo shortly after he had published the book now under consideration. Pius VI. made him a cardinal in 1789, and he died in Rome in 1804. Icazbalceta was not able to ascertain whether the Bishop had before him the original editions of the letters or Barcia’s reprint; but he added to the value of his text by numerous annotations. In 1828 an imperfect reprint of this book, “á la ortografía moderna,” was produced in New York for the Mexican market, by Manuel del Mar, under the title of Historia de Méjico,[1119] to which a life of Cortés, by R. C. Sands, was added.[1120] Icazbalceta notes some of the imperfections of this edition in his Coleccion, vol. i. p. xxxv.[1121]

Cartas y relaciones al Emperador Carlos V., colegidas é ilustradas por P. de Gayangos, Paris, 1866. Besides the Cortés letters, this distinguished scholar included in this book various other contemporary documents relating to the Conquest, embracing letters sent to Cortés’ lieutenants; and he also added an important introduction. He included the fifth letter for the first time in the series, and drew upon the archives of Vienna and Simancas with advantage.[1122]

The letters were again included in the Biblioteca histórica de la Iberia published at Mexico in 1870.

In Latin. The second and third letters, with the account of Peter Martyr, were issued at Cologne in 1532, with the title De insulis nuper inventis, etc., as shown in the annexed fac-simile of the title, with its portrait of Charles V. and the escutcheons of Spanish towns and provinces.[1123]

LORENZANA’S MAP OF NEW SPAIN.

In French. Harrisse (Bibl. Amer. Vet., Additions, no. 73) notes a French rendering of a text, seemingly made up of the first and second letters, and probably following a Spanish original, now lost, which was printed at Antwerp in 1523.[1124] This second letter is also epitomized in the French Extraict ou recueil des isles nouvellement trouvées of Peter Martyr, printed at Paris in 1532, and in Bellegarde’s Histoire universelle des voyages (Amsterdam, 1708), vol. i.

The principal French translation is one based on Lorenzana, abridging that edition somewhat, and numbering the letters erroneously first, second, and third. It was published at Paris in 1778, 1779, etc., under the title Correspondance de Fernand Cortes avec l’Empereur Charles Quint, and was translated by the Vicomte de Flavigny.[1125] The text of Flavigny’s second letter is included in Charton’s Voyageurs, iii. 368-420. There were also editions of Flavigny printed in Switzerland and at Frankfort.

In German. A translation of the second and third letters, made by Andrew Diether and Birck, was published at Augsburg in 1550 as Cortesi von dem Newen Hispanien. After the second letter, which constitutes part i., the beginning of part ii. is borrowed from Peter Martyr, which is followed by the third letter of Cortés; and this is succeeded in turn, on folios 51-60, by letters from Venezuela about the settlements there (1534-1540), and one from Oviedo written at San Domingo in 1543. There are matters which are not contained in any of the Spanish or Latin editions.[1126]

The second, third, and fourth letters—translated by J. J. Stapfer, who supplied a meritorious introduction and an appendix—were printed at Heidelberg in 1779 as Eroberung von Mexico, and again at Berne in 1793.[1127] Another German version, by Karl Wilhelm Koppe,—Drei Berichte des General-Kapitäns Cortes an Karl V.,—with an introduction and notes, was published at Berlin in 1834. It has the tribute-registers and map of New Spain, as in Lorenzana’s edition.[1128]

In Dutch and Flemish. Harrisse (Bibl. Amer. Vet., Additions, no. 72) notes a tract of thirty leaves, in gothic letter, called De Contreyen vanden Eylanden, etc., which was printed in Antwerp in 1523 (with a French counterpart at the same time), and which seems to have been based on the first and second letters, combined in a Spanish original not now known. There is a copy in the National Library at Paris. There was a Dutch version, or epitome, in the Dutch edition of Grynæus, 1563, and a Flemish version appeared in Ablyn’s Nieuwe Weerelt, at Antwerp, 1563. There was another Dutch rendering in Gottfried and Vander Aa’s Zee-en landreizen (1727)[1129] and in the Brieven van Ferdinand Cortes, Amsterdam, 1780.[1130]

In Italian. In the third volume of Ramusio.

In English. Alsop translated from Flavigny the second letter, in the Portfolio, Philadelphia, 1817. George Folsom, in 1843, translated from Lorenzana’s text the second, third, and fourth letters, which he published as Despatches written during the Conquest, adding an introduction and notes, which in part are borrowed from Lorenzana.[1131] Willes in his edition of Eden, as early as 1577, had given an abridgment in his History of Travayle.[1132] (See Vol. III. p. 204.)

III. The Third Letter, covering the internal, Oct. 30, 1520, to May 15, 1522. It is called Carta tercera de relaciō, and was printed (thirty leaves) at Seville in 1523.[1133]

The next year, 1524, a Latin edition (Tertia narratio) appeared at Nuremberg in connection with the Latin of the second letter of that date.[1134] This version was also made by Savorgnanus, and was reprinted in the Novus orbis of 1555.[1135]

This third letter appeared also in collective editions, as explained under the head of the second letter. This letter was accompanied by what is known as the “secret letter,” which was first printed in the Documentos inéditos, i. 11, in Kingsborough, vol. viii., and in Gayangos’ edition of the letters.

IV. The Fourth Letter, covering the interval, May, 1522, to October, 1524. There were two Spanish editions (a, b).

a. La quarta relacion (Toledo, 1525), in gothic letter, twenty-one leaves.[1136]

b. La quarta relaciō (Valencia, 1526), in gothic type, twenty-six leaves.[1137]

This letter was accompanied by reports to Cortés from Alvarado and Godoy, and these are also included in Barcia, Ramusio, etc.

A secret letter (dated October 15) of Cortés to the Emperor,—Esta es una carta que Hernando Cortés escrivio al Emperador,—sent with this fourth letter, is at Simancas. It was printed by Icazbalceta in 1855 (Mexico, sixty copies),[1138] who reprinted it in his Coleccion, i. 470. Gayangos, in 1866, printed it in his edition (p. 325) from a copy which Muñoz had made. Icazbalceta again printed it sumptuously, “en caracteres góticos del siglo XVI.,” at Mexico in 1865 (seventy copies).[1139] This letter also appears in collections mentioned under the second letter. It was in this letter that Cortés explained to the Emperor his purpose of finding the supposed strait which led from the Atlantic to the south sea.

V. The fifth letter, dated Sept. 3, 1526. It pertains to the famous expedition to Honduras.[1140] It is called Carta quinta de relacion, and was discovered through Robertson’s instrumentality, but not printed at length till it appeared in the Coleccion de documentos inéditos (España), iv. 8-167, with other “relaciones” on this expedition. George Folsom reprinted it in New York in 1848 as “carta sexta ... publicada ahora por primera vez” by mistake for “carta quinta.”[1141] It was translated and annotated by Gayangos for the Hakluyt Society in 1868.[1142] Gayangos had already included it in his edition of the Cartas, 1866, and it had also been printed by Vedia in Ribadeneyras’ Biblioteca de autores Españoles (1852), vol. xxii., and later in the Biblioteca histórica de la Iberia (1870). Extracts in English are given in the appendix of Prescott’s Mexico, vol. iii. Mr. Kirk, the editor of Prescott, doubts if the copy in the Imperial Library at Vienna is the original, because it has no date. A copy at Madrid, purporting to be made from the original by Alonzo Diaz, is dated Sept. 3, 1526,[1143] and is preferred by Gayangos, who collated its text with that of the Vienna Library. Various other less important letters of Cortés have been printed from time to time.[1144]

In estimating the letters of Cortés as historical material, the soldierly qualities of them impressed Prescott, and Helps is struck with their directness so strongly that he is not willing to believe in the prevarications or deceits of any part of them. H. H. Bancroft,[1145] on the contrary, discovers in them “calculated misstatements, both direct and negative.” It is well known that Bernal Diaz and Pedro de Alvarado made complaints of their leader’s too great willingness to ignore all others but himself.[1146]

B. Three Contemporary Writers,—Gomara, Bernal Diaz, and Sahagun.—Fortunately we have various other narratives to qualify or confirm the recitals of the leader.

In 1540, when he was thirty years old, Francisco Lopez Gomara became the chaplain and secretary of Cortés. In undertaking an historical record in which his patron played a leading part, he might be suspected to write somewhat as an adulator; and so Las Casas, Diaz, and many others have claimed that he did, and Muñoz asserts that Gomara believed his authorities too easily.[1147] That the Spanish Government made a show of suppressing his book soon after it was published, and kept the edict in their records till 1729, is rather in favor of his honest chronicling. Gomara had good claims for consideration in a learned training, a literary taste, and in the possession of facilities which his relations with Cortés threw in his way; and we find him indispensable, if for no other reason, because he had access to documentary evidence which has since disappeared. His questionable reputation for bias has not prevented Herrera and other later historians placing great dependence on him, and a native writer of the beginning of the seventeenth century, Chimalpain, has translated Gomara, adding some illustrations for the Indian records.[1148]

Gomara’s book is in effect two distinct ones, though called at first two parts of a Historia general de las Indias. Of these the second part—La conquista de México—appeared earliest, at Saragossa in 1552, and is given to the Conquest of Mexico, while the first part, more particularly relating to the subjugation of Peru, appeared in 1553.[1149] What usually passes for a second edition appeared at Medina del Campo, also in 1553;[1150] and it was again reprinted at Saragossa in 1554, this time as two distinct works,—one, Cronica de la Nueva España con la conquista de México; and the other, La historia general de las Indias y Nuevo Mundo.[1151] The same year (1554) saw several editions in Spanish at Antwerp, with different publishers.[1152] An Italian edition followed in 1555-1556, for one titlepage, Historia del ... capitano Don Ferdinando Cortés, is dated 1556, and a second, Historia de México, has 1555,—both at Rome.[1153]

Other editions, more or less complete, are noted as published in Venice in 1560, 1564, 1565, 1566, 1570, 1573, 1576, and 1599.[1154] The earliest French edition appeared at Paris in 1568 and 1569, for the two dates and two imprints seem to belong to one issue; and its text—a not very creditable translation by Fumée—was reproduced in the editions of 1577, 1578, 1580, and with some additions in 1584, 1587, 1588, and 1597.[1155] The earliest edition in English omits much. It is called The Pleasant Historie of the Conquest of the Weast India, now called New Spayne, atchieved by the worthy Prince Hernando Cortes, Marques of the valley of Huaxacac, most delectable to reade, translated out of the Spanishe tongue by T[homas] N[icholas], published by Henry Bynneman in 1578.[1156] Gomara himself warned his readers against undertaking a Latin version, as he had one in hand himself; but it was never printed.[1157]

Gomara had, no doubt, obscured the merits of the captains of Cortés in telling the story of that leader’s career. Instigated largely by this, and confirmed in his purpose, one of the partakers in the glories and hardships of the Conquest was impelled to tell the story anew, in the light of the observation which fell to a subordinate. He was not perhaps so much jealous of the fame of Cortés as he was hurt at the neglect by Gomara of those whose support had made the fame of Cortés possible.

This was Bernal Diaz del Castillo, and his book is known as the Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Neuva España, which was not printed till 1632 at Madrid, nor had it been written till half a century after the Conquest, during which interval the name of Cortés had gathered its historic prestige. Diaz had begun the writing of it in 1568 at Santiago in Guatemala, when, as he tells us, only five of the original companions of Cortés remained alive.[1158] It is rudely, or rather simply, written, as one might expect. The author has none of the practised arts of condensation; and Prescott[1159] well defines the story as long-winded and gossiping, but of great importance. It is indeed inestimable, as the record of the actor in more than a hundred of the fights which marked the progress of the Conquest. The untutored air of the recital impressed Robertson and Southey with confidence in its statements, and the reader does not fail to be conscious of a minute rendering of the life which made up those eventful days. His criticism of Cortés himself does not, by any means, prevent his giving him great praise; and, as Prescott says,[1160] he censures his leader, but he does not allow any one else to do the same. The lapse of time before Diaz set about his literary task did not seem to abate his zeal or check his memory; but it does not fail, however, to diminish our own confidence a good deal. Prescott[1161] contends that the better the acquaintance with Diaz’ narrative, the less is the trust which one is inclined to put in it.[1162] The Spanish text which we possess is taken, it is said, directly from the original manuscript, which had slumbered in private hands till Father Alonso Rémon found it, or a copy of it, in Spain, and obtained a decree to print it,[1163] about fifty years after Diaz’ death, which occurred in 1593, or thereabouts.

The nearest approach among contemporaries to a survey of the story of the Conquest from the Aztec side is that given by the Franciscan, Sahagun, in connection with his great work on the condition of the Mexican peoples prior to the coming of the Spaniards. Sahagun came to Mexico in 1529. He lived in the new land for over sixty years, and acquired a proficiency in the native tongue hardly surpassed by any other of the Spaniards. He brought to the new field something besides the iconoclastic frenzy that led so many of his countrymen to destroy what they could of the literature and arts of the Aztecs,—so necessary in illustration of their pagan life and rites. This zealous and pious monk turned aside from seeking the preferments of his class to study the motives, lives, and thoughts of the Aztec peoples. He got from them their hieroglyphics; these in turn were translated into the language of their speech, but expressed in the Roman character; and the whole subjected more than once to the revising of such of the natives as had, in his day, been educated in the Spanish schools.[1164] Thirty years were given to this kind of preparation; and when he had got his work written out in Mexican, the General of his Order seized it, and some years elapsed before a restitution of it was made. Sahagun had got to be eighty years old when, with his manuscript restored to him, he set about re-writing it, with the Mexican text in one column and the Spanish in another. The two huge volumes of his script found their way to Spain, and were lost sight of till Muñoz discovered them in the convent of Tolosa in Navarre, not wholly unimpaired by the vicissitudes to which they had been subjected. The Nahuatl text, which made part of it, is still missing.[1165]

It was not long afterward (1829-1830) printed by Cárlos María Bustamante in three volumes as Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España,[1166] to which was added, as a fourth volume, also published separately, Historia de la conquista de México, containing what is usually cited as the twelfth book of Sahagun. In this, as in the other parts, he used a copy which Muñoz had made, and which is the earlier draft of the text as Sahagun formed it. It begins with a recital of the omens which preceded the coming of Grijalva, and ends with the fall of the city; and it is written, as he says, from the evidence, in large part, of the eye-witnesses, particularly on the Aztec side, though mixed, somewhat confusedly, with recollections from old Spanish soldiers. Harrisse[1167] speaks of this edition as “castrated in such a way as to require, for a perfect understanding of this dry but important book, the reading of the parts published in vols. v. and vi. of Kingsborough.” The text, as given in Kingsborough’s Mexico, began to appear about a year later, that edition only giving, in the first instance, book vi., which relates to the customs of the Aztecs before the Conquest; but in a later volume he reproduced the whole of the work without comment. Kingsborough had also used the Muñoz text, and has made, according to Simeon, fewer errors in transcribing the Nahuatl words than Bustamante, and has also given a purer Spanish text. Bustamante again printed, in 1840, another text of this twelfth book, after a manuscript belonging to the Conde de Cortina, appending notes by Clavigero and others, with an additional chapter.[1168] The Mexican editor claimed that this was the earlier text; but Prescott denies it. Torquemada is thought to have used, but without due acknowledgment, still another text, which is less modified than the others in expressions regarding the Conquerors. The peculiar value of Sahagun’s narrative hardly lies in its completeness, proportions, or even trustworthiness as an historical record. “His accuracy as regards any historical fact is not to be relied on,” says Helps.[1169] Brevoort calls the work of interest mainly for its records of persons and places not found elsewhere.[1170] Prescott thinks that this twelfth book is the most honest record which the natives have left us, as Sahagun embodies the stories and views prevalent among the descendants of the victims of the Conquest. “This portion of the work,” he says, “was rewritten by Sahagun at a later period of his life, and considerable changes were made in it; yet it may be doubted if the reformed version reflects the traditions of the country as faithfully as the original draft.”[1171] This new draft was made by Sahagun in 1585, thirty years after the original writing, for the purpose, as he says, of adding some things which had been omitted, and leaving out others. Prescott could not find, in comparing this later draft with the earlier, that its author had mitigated any of the statements which, as he first wrote them, bore so hard on his countrymen. The same historian thinks there is but little difference in the intrinsic value of the two drafts.[1172]

The best annotated edition of Sahagun is a French translation, published in Paris in 1880 as Histoire générale des choses de la Nouvelle Espagne, seemingly from the Kingsborough text, which is more friendly to the Spaniards than the first of Bustamante. The joint editors are Denis Jourdanet and Remi Siméon, the latter, as a Nahuatl scholar, taking charge of those portions of the text which fell within his linguistic range, and each affording a valuable introduction in their respective studies.[1173]

C. Other Early Accounts.—The Voyages, Relations, et Mémoires of Ternaux-Compans (Paris, 1837-1840) offer the readiest source of some of the most significant of the documents and monographs pertaining to early Mexican history. Two of the volumes[1174] gather some of the minor documents. Another volume[1175] is given to Zurita’s “Rapport sur les différentes classes des chefs de la Nouvelle Espagne.” Three others[1176] contain an account of the cruelties practised by the Spaniards at the Conquest, and the history of the ancient kings of Tezcuco,—both the work of Ferdinando d’Alva Ixtlilxochitl.[1177] The former work, not correctly printed, and called, somewhat arbitrarily, Horribles crueldades de los Conquistadores de México, was first published by Bustamante, in 1829, as a supplement to Sahagun. The manuscript (which was no. 13 of a number of Noticias, or Relaciones históricas, by this native writer) had been for a while after the writer’s death (about 1648) preserved in the library of the Jesuit College in Mexico, and had thence passed to the archive general of the State. It bears the certificate of a notary, in 1608, that it had been compared with the Aztec records and found to be correct. The original work contained several Relaciones, but only the one (no. 13) relating to the Conquest was published by Bustamante and Ternaux.[1178]

The other work of Ixtlilxochitl was first printed (after Veytia’s copy) in Spanish by Kingsborough, in his ninth volume, before Ternaux, who used another copy, included it in his collection under the title of Histoire des Chichimeque ou des anciens Rois de Tezcuco. This is the only work of Ixtlilxochitl which has been printed entire. According to Clavigero, these treatises were written at the instance of the Spanish viceroy; and as a descendant of the royal line of Tezcuco (the great great-grandson, it is said, of the king of like name) their author had great advantages, with perhaps great predispositions to laudation, though he is credited with extreme carefulness in his statements;[1179] and Prescott affirms that he has been followed with confidence by such as have had access to his writings. Ixtlilxochitl informs us that he has derived his material from such remains of his ancestral documents as were left to him. He seems also to have used Gomara and other accessible authorities. He lived in the early part of the seventeenth century, and as interpreter of the viceroy maintained a respectable social position when many of his royal line were in the humblest service. His Relaciones are hardly regular historical compositions, since they lack independent and compact form; but his Historia Chichimeca is the best of them, and is more depended upon by Prescott than the others are. There is a certain charm in his simplicity, his picturesqueness, and honesty; and readers accept these qualities often in full recompense for his credulity and want of discrimination,—and perhaps for a certain servility to the Spanish masters, for whose bounty he could press the claims of a line of vassals of his own blood.[1180]

D. Native Writers.—The pious vandalism of the bishops of Mexico and Yucatan, which doomed to destruction so much of the native records of days antecedent to the Conquest,[1181] fortunately was not so ruthlessly exercised later, when native writers gathered up what they could, and told the story of their people’s downfall, either in the language of the country or in an acquired Spanish.[1182] Brasseur de Bourbourg, in the introduction to his Nations civilisées du Mexique (Paris, 1857-1859), enumerates the manuscript sources to which he had access,[1183] largely pertaining to the period anterior to the Spaniards, but also in part covering the history of the Conquest, which in his fourth volume[1184] he narrates mainly from the native point of view, while he illustrates the Indian life under its contact with the Spanish rule.

Brasseur was fortunate in having access to the Aubin Collection of manuscripts,[1185] which had originally been formed between 1736 and 1745 by the Chevalier Lorenzo Boturini Benaduci; and that collector in 1746 gave a catalogue of them at the end of his Idea de una nueva historia general de la America septentrional, published at Madrid in that year.[1186] Unfortunately, the labors of this devoted archæologist incurred the jealousy of the Spanish Government, and his library was more or less scattered; but to him we owe a large part of what we find in the collections of Bustamante, Kingsborough, and Ternaux. Mariano Veytia[1187] was his executor, and had the advantages of Boturini’s collections in his own Historia Antigua de Mejico.[1188] Boturini’s catalogue, however, shows us that much has disappeared, which we may regret. Such is the Cronica of Tlaxcala, by Juan Ventura Zapata y Mendoza, which brought the story down to 1689, which Brinton hopes may yet be discovered in Spain.[1189] One important work is saved,—that of Camargo.

Muñoz Camargo was born in Mexico just after the Conquest, and was connected by marriage with leading native families, and attained high official position in Tlaxcala, whose history he wrote, beginning its composition in 1576, and finishing it in 1585. He had collected much material. Ternaux[1190] printed a French translation of a mutilated text; but it has never been printed in the condition, fragmentary though it be, in which it was recovered by Boturini. Prescott says the original manuscript was long preserved in a convent in Mexico, where Torquemada used it. It was later taken to Spain, when it found its way into the Muñoz Collection in the Academy of History at Madrid, whence Prescott got his copy. This last historian speaks of the work as supplying much curious and authentic information respecting the social and religious condition of the Aztecs. Camargo tells fully the story of the Conquest, but he deals out his applause and sympathy to the conquerors and the conquered with equal readiness.[1191]

Other manuscripts have not yet been edited. Chimalpain’s Cronica Mexicana, in the Nahuatl tongue, which covers the interval from A. D. 1068 to 1597, is one of these. Another Nahuatl manuscript in Boturini’s list is an anonymous history of Culhuacan and Mexico. An imperfect translation of this into Spanish, by Galicia, has been made in Mexico. Brasseur copied it, and called it the Codex Chimalpopoca.[1192] In 1879 the Museo Nacional at Mexico began to print it in their Anales (vol. ii.), adding a new version by Mendoza and Solis, under the title of Anales de Cuauhtitlan.[1193]

Bancroft’s list, prefixed to his Mexico, makes mention of most of these native Mexican sources. Of principal use among them may be mentioned Fernando de Alvaro Tezozomoc’s Cronica Mexicana, or Histoire du Mexique, written in 1598, and published in 1853, in Paris, by Ternaux-Compans.[1194]

Brinton has published in the first volume of his library of Aboriginal American Literature (1882, p. 189) the chronicle of Chac-xulub-chen, written in the Maya in 1562, which throws light on the methods of the Spanish Conquest.

There was a native account, by Don Gabriel Castañeda, of the conquest of the Chichimecs by the Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza in 1541; but Brinton[1195] says all trace of it is lost since it was reported to be in the Convent of Ildefonso in Mexico.

Perhaps the most important native contribution to the history of Guatemala is Francisco Ernandez Arana Xahila’s Memorial de Tecpan Atitlan, written in 1581 and later in the dialect of Cakchiquel, and bringing the history of a distinguished branch of the Cakchiquels down to 1562, from which point it is continued by Francisco Gebuta Queh. Brasseur de Bourbourg loosely rendered it, and from this paraphrase a Spanish version has been printed in Guatemala; but the original has never been printed. Brinton (in his Aboriginal American Authors, p. 32) says he has a copy; and another is in Europe. It is of great importance as giving the native accounts of the conquest of Guatemala.[1196] An ardent advocacy of the natives was also shown in the Historia de las Indias de Nueva España of the Padre Diego Duran, which was edited by Ramirez, so far as the first volume goes, in 1867, when it was published in Mexico with an atlas of plates after the manuscript; but this publication is said not to present all the drawings of the original manuscript. The overthrow of Maximilian prevented the completion of the publication. The incoming Republican government seized what had been printed, so that the fruit of Ramirez’s labor is now scarce. Quaritch priced the editor’s own copy at £8 10s. The editor had polished the style of the original somewhat, and made other changes, which excited some disgust in the purists; and this action on his part may have had something to do with the proceedings of the new Government. Ramirez claimed descent from the Aztecs, and this may account for much of his stern judgment respecting Cortés.[1197] The story in this first volume is only brought down to the reign of Montezuma. The manuscript is preserved in the royal library at Madrid.[1198] Duran was a half-breed, his mother being of Tezcuco. He became a Dominican; but a slender constitution kept him from the missionary field, and he passed a monastic life of literary labors. He had finished in 1579 the later parts of his work treating of the Mexican divinities, calendars, and festivals; and then, reverting to the portions which came first in the manuscript, he tells the story of Mexican history rather clumsily, but with a certain native force and insight, down to the period of the Honduras expedition. The manuscript of Duran passed, after his death in 1588, to Juan Tovar, and from him, perhaps with the representations that Tovar (or Tobar) was its author, to José de Acosta, who represents Tovar as the author, and who had then prepared, while in Peru, his De Natura Novi Orbis.

E. The Earlier Historians.—José de Acosta was born about 1540 in Spain; but at fourteen he joined the Jesuits. He grew learned, and in 1571 he went to Peru, in which country he spent fifteen years, becoming the provincial of his Order. He tarried two other years in Mexico—where he saw Tovar—and in the islands. He then returned to Spain laden with manuscripts and information, became a royal favorite, held other offices, and died as rector of Salamanca in 1600,[1199] having published in his books on the New World the most popular and perhaps most satisfactory account of it up to that time; while his theological works give evidence, as Markham says, of great learning.

Acosta’s first publication appeared at Salamanca in 1588 and 1589, and was in effect two essays, though they are usually found under one cover (they had separate titles, but were continuously paged), De natura Novi Orbis libri duo, et de promulgatione evangelii apud barbaros, ... libri sex. In the former he describes the physical features of the country, and in the latter he told the story Of the conversion of the Indians.[1200] Acosta now translated the two books of the De natura into Spanish, and added five other books. The work was thus made to form a general cosmographical treatise, with particular reference to the New World; and included an account of the religion and government of the Indians of Peru and Mexico. He also gave a brief recital of the Conquest. In this extended form, and under the title of Historia natvral y moral de las Indias, en qve se tratan las cosas notables del cielo, y elementos, metales, plantas, y animales dellas; y los ritos, y ceremonias, leyes, y gouierno, y guerras de los Indios, it was published at Seville in 1590.[1201]

Two other accounts of this period deserve notice. One is by Joan Suarez de Peralta, who was born in Mexico in 1536, and wrote a Tratado del descubrimiento de las Yndias y su conquista, which is preserved in manuscript in the library at Toledo in Spain. It is not full, however, on the Conquest; but is more definite for the period from 1565 to 1589. It was printed at Madrid in 1878, in the Noticias históricas de la Nueva España publicadas con la protection del ministerio de fomento por Don Justo Zaragoza. The other is Henrico Martinez’ Repertorio de los Tiempos y historia natural de la Nueva España, published at Mexico in 1606. It covers the Mexican annals from 1520 to 1590.[1202]

One of the earliest to depend largely on the native chroniclers was Juan de Torquemada, in his Monarquía Indiana. This author was born in Spain, but came young to Mexico; and was a priest of the Franciscan habit, who finally became (1614-1617) the provincial of that Order. He had assiduously labored to collect all that he could find regarding the history of the people among whom he was thrown; and his efforts were increased when, in 1609, he received orders to prepare his labors for publication. His book is esteemed for the help it affords in understanding these people. Ternaux calls it the most complete narrative which we possess of the ancient history of Mexico. He took the history, as the native writers had instructed him, of the period before the Conquest, and derived from them and his own observation much respecting the kind of life which the conquerors found prevailing in the country. In his account of the Conquest, which constitutes the fourth book in vol. i., Torquemada seems to depend largely on Herrera, though he does not neglect Sahagun and the native writers. Clavigero tells us that Torquemada for fifty years had known the language of the natives, and spent twenty years or more in arranging his history. He also tells us of the use which Torquemada made of the manuscripts which he found in the colleges of Mexico, of the writings of Ixtlilxochitl, Camargo, and of the history of Cholula by another writer of native origin, Juan Batista Pomar. Another book of considerable use to him was the work of a warm eulogist of the natives, if not himself of their blood; and this was the Historia Eclesiástica Indiana, a work written by Gerónimo de Mendieta near the end of the sixteenth century. Mendieta was in Mexico from 1554 to 1571,[1203] and his work, finished in 1596, after having remained for two hundred years in manuscript, was printed and annotated by Icazbalceta at Mexico, in 1870.[1204]

The Monarquía Indiana, in which these and other writers were so freely employed as to be engrafted in parts almost bodily, was first printed in three volumes at Madrid in 1615; but before this the Inquisition had struck out from its pages some curious chapters, particularly, says Rich, one comparing the migration of the Toltecs to that of the Israelites. The colophon of this edition shows the date of 1614.[1205] It is said that most of it was lost in a shipwreck, and this accounts, doubtless, for its rarity. The original manuscript, however, being preserved, it served Barcia well in editing a reprint in 1723, published at Madrid, which is now considered the standard edition.[1206] Torquemada doubtless derived something of his skill in the native tongue from his master, Fray Joan Baptista, who had the reputation of being the most learned scholar of the Mexican language in his time.[1207]

The Teatro Mexicano of Augustin de Vetancurt, published at Mexico in 1697-1698,[1208] is the next general chronicle after Torquemada. Vetancourt, also, was a Franciscan, born in Mexico in 1620, and died in 1700. He had the literary fecundity of his class; but the most important of his works is the one already named; and in the third part of the first volume we find his history of the Conquest. He seldom goes behind his predecessor, and Torquemada must stand sponsor for much of his recital.

F. Modern Historians.—The well-known work of Solis (Historia de la Conquista de México,[1209] published at Madrid in 1684) is the conspicuous precursor of a long series of histories of the Conquest, written without personal knowledge of the actors in this extraordinary event. Solis ended his narrative with the fall of the city, the author’s death preventing any further progress, though it is said he had gathered further materials; but they are not known to exist. A work by Ignacio Salazar y Olarte, continuing the narrative down to the death of Cortés, is called a second part, and was published at Cordova in 1743, under the title of Historia de la conquista de México, poblacion y progressos de la América septentrional conocida por el nombre de Nueva España. This continuation was reprinted at Madrid in 1786, and in the opinion of Bancroft[1210] abounds “in all the faults of the superficial and florid composition of Solis.”

Solis, who was born at Alcala in 1610, was educated at Salamanca, and had acquired a great reputation in letters, when he attracted the attention of the Court, and was appointed historiographer of the Indies. Some time afterward (1667) he entered the Church, at fifty-six; but to earn his salary as official chronicler,—which was small enough at best,—he turned, with a good deal of the poetic and artistic instinct which his previous training had developed, to tell the story of the Conquest, with a skill which no one before had employed upon the theme. The result was a work which, “to an extraordinary degree,” as Ticknor[1211] says, took on “the air of an historical epic, so exactly are all its parts and episodes modelled into a harmonious whole, whose catastrophe is the fall of the great Mexican Empire.” The book was a striking contrast to the chronicling spirit of all preceding recitals.

SOLIS.

Fac-simile of engraving in his Historia, published at Venice in 1715. There are other likenesses in the Madrid (1783) edition, and in Cumplido’s Mexican edition of Prescott’s Mexico, vol. iii.

The world soon saw—though the sale of the book was not large at once, and the author died very poor two years later (1686)—that the strange story had been given its highest setting. Solis gives no notes; and one needs to know the literature of the subject, to track him to his authorities. If this is done, however, it appears that his investigation was far from deep, and that with original material within his reach he rarely or never used it, but took the record at second hand. Robertson, who had to depend on him more or less, was aware of this, and judged him less solicitous of discovering truth than of glorifying the splendor of deeds. This panegyrical strain in the book has lowered its reputation, particularly among foreign critics, who fail to share the enthusiasm which Solis expresses for Cortés. We may call his bitter denunciations of the natives bigotry or pious zeal; but Ticknor accounts for it by saying that Solis “refused to see the fierce and marvellous contest except from the steps of the altar where he had been consecrated.” The religion and national pride of the Spaniards have not made this quality detract in the least from the estimation in which the book has long been held; but all that they say of the charm and purity of its style, despite something of tiresomeness in its even flow, is shared by the most conspicuous of foreign critics, like Prescott and Ticknor. Rich, who had opportunities for knowing, bears evidence to the estimation in Spain of those qualities which have insured the fame of Solis.[1212]

The story was not told again with the dignity of a classic,—except so far as Herrera composed it,—till Robertson, in his History of America, recounted it. He used the printed sources with great fidelity; but he was denied a chance to examine the rich manuscript material which was open to Solis, and which Robertson would doubtless have used more abundantly. In a Note (xcvii.) he enumerates his chief authorities, and they are only the letters of Cortés and the story as told by Gomara, Bernal Diaz, Peter Martyr, Solis, and Herrera.[1213] Of Solis, Robertson says he knows no author in any language whose literary fame has risen so far beyond his real merits. He calls him “destitute of that patient industry in research which conducts to the knowledge of truth, and a stranger to that impartiality which weighs evidence with cool attention.... Though he sometimes quotes the despatches of Cortés, he seems not to have consulted them; and though he sets out with some censure on Gomara, he frequently prefers his authority—the most doubtful of any—to that of the other contemporary historians.” Robertson judged that Herrera furnished the fullest and most accurate information, and that if his work had not in its chronological order been so perplexed, disconnected, and obscure, Herrera might justly have been ranked among the most eminent historians of his country. William Smyth, in the twenty-first section of his Lectures on Modern History, in an account which is there given of the main sources of information respecting the Conquest, as they were accessible forty or fifty years ago, awards high praise—certainly not undeserved for his time—to Robertson. Southey accused Robertson of unduly depreciating the character and civilization of the Mexicans; and others have held the opinion that he had a tendency to palliate the crimes of the invaders. Robertson, in his later editions, replied to such strictures, and held that Clavigero and others had differed from him chiefly in confiding in the improbable narratives and fanciful conjectures of Torquemada and Boturini.

Francisco Saverio Clavigero was a Jesuit, who had long resided in Mexico, being born at Vera Cruz in 1731; but when expelled with his Order, he took up his abode in Italy in 1767. He had the facilities and the occasion for going more into detail than Robertson. His Storia antica del Messico cavata da’ migliori storici spagnuoli, e da’ manoscritti; e dalle pitture antiche degl’Indiani: divisa in dieci libri, e corredata di carte geografiche, e di varie figure: e dissertazioni sulla terra, sugli animali, e sugli abitatori del Messico,[1214] was published in four volumes at Cesena in 1780-1781. He gives the names of thirty-nine Indian and Spanish writers who had written upon the theme, and has something to say of the Mexican historical paintings which he had examined. H. H. Bancroft esteems him a leading authority,[1215] and says he rearranged the material in a masterly manner, and invested it with a philosophic spirit, altogether superior to anything presented till Prescott’s time.[1216] It is in his third volume that Clavigero particularly treats of the Conquest, having been employed on the earlier chronicles and the manners and customs of the people in the first and second, while the fourth volume is made up of particular dissertations. Clavigero was not without learning. He had passed three years at the Jesuit College at Tepozotlan, and had taught as a master in various branches. At Bologna, where he latterly lived, he founded an academy; and here he died in 1787, leaving behind him a Storia della California, published at Venice in 1789.[1217]

Fifteen years ago it was the opinion of Henry Stevens,[1218] that all other books which have been elaborated since on the same subject, instead of superseding Clavigero’s, have tended rather to magnify its importance.[1219]

The most conspicuous treatment of the subject, in the minds of the elders of the present generation, is doubtless that of Prescott, who published his Conquest of Mexico in 1843, dividing it into three distinct parts,—the first showing a survey of the Aztec civilization; the second depicting the Conquest; while the final period brought down the life of Cortés to his death. Charton[1220] speaks of Solis as a work “auquel le livre de Prescott a porté un dernier coup.” Prescott was at great expense and care in amassing much manuscript material never before used, chiefly in copies, which Rich and others had procured for him, and he is somewhat minute in his citations from them. They have since been in large part printed, and doubtless very much more is at present accessible in type to the student than was in Prescott’s day.[1221]

Prescott was of good New England stock, settled in Essex County, Massachusetts, where (in Salem) he was born in 1796. His father removed to Boston in 1808, and became a judge of one of the courts. A mischance at Harvard, in a student’s frolic, deprived young Prescott of the use of one eye; and the other became in time permanently affected. Thus he subsequently labored at his historical studies under great disadvantage,[1222] and only under favorable circumstances and for short periods could he read for himself. In this way he became dependent upon the assistance of secretaries, though he generally wrote his early drafts by the aid of a noctograph.

WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT.

This cut follows an engraving in mezzotint in the Eclectic Magazine (1858), and shows him using his noctograph. The likeness was thought by his wife and sister (Mrs. Dexter) to be the best ever made, as Mr. Arthur Dexter informs me. See other likenesses in Ticknor’s Life of Prescott; Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., iv. 167; and N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg. (1868), p. 226.

From 1826 to 1837 he was engaged on his Ferdinand and Isabella, and this naturally led him to the study of his Mexican and Peruvian themes; and Irving, who had embarked on them as a literary field, generously abandoned his pursuit to the new and rising historian.[1223] The Conquest of Mexico appeared in 1843,[1224] and has long remained a charming book, as fruitful in authority as the material then accessible could make it.

In the Preface to his Mexico Mr. Prescott tells of his success in getting unpublished material, showing how a more courteous indulgence was shown to him than Robertson had enjoyed. By favor of the Academy of History in Madrid he got many copies of the manuscripts of Muñoz and of Vargas y Ponçe, and he enjoyed the kind offices of Navarrete in gathering this material. He mentions that, touching the kindred themes of Mexico and Peru, he thus obtained the bulk of eight thousand folio pages. From Mexico itself he gathered other appliances, and these largely through the care of Alaman, the minister of foreign affairs, and of Calderon de la Barca, the minister to Mexico from Spain. He also acknowledges the courtesy of the descendants of Cortés in opening their family archives; that of Sir Thomas Phillipps, whose manuscript stores have become so famous, and the kindness of Ternaux-Compans.

To Mr. John Foster Kirk, who had been Prescott’s secretary, the preparation of new editions of Prescott’s works was intrusted, and in this series the Mexico was republished in 1874. Kirk was enabled, as Prescott himself had been in preparing for it, to make use of the notes which Ramirez had added to the Spanish translation by Joaquin Navarro, published in Mexico in 1844, and of those of Lúcas Alaman, attached to another version, published also in Mexico.[1225]

Almost coincident with the death of Prescott, was published by a chance Mr. Robert Anderson Wilson’s New History of the Conquest of Mexico.[1226] Its views were not unexpected, and indeed Prescott had been in correspondence[1227] with the author. His book was rather an extravagant argument than a history, and was aimed to prove the utter untrustworthiness of the ordinary chroniclers of the Conquest, charging the conquerors with exaggerating and even creating the fabric of the Aztec civilization, to enhance the effect which the overthrow of so much splendor would have in Europe. To this end he pushes Cortés aside as engrafting fable on truth for such a purpose, dismisses rather wildly Bernal Diaz as a myth, and declares the picture-writings to be Spanish fabrications. This view was not new, except in its excess of zeal. Albert Gallatin had held a similar belief.[1228] Lewis Cass had already seriously questioned, in the North American Review, October, 1840, the consistency of the Spanish historians. A previous work by Mr. Wilson had already, indeed, announced his views, though less emphatically. This book had appeared in three successive editions,—as Mexico and its Religion (New York, 1855); then as Mexico, its Peasants and its Priests (1856); and finally as Mexico, Central America, and California.

It was easy to accuse Wilson of ignorance and want of candor,—for he had laid himself open too clearly to this charge,—and Mr. Prescott’s friend, Mr. George Ticknor, arraigned him in the Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., April, 1859.[1229] He reminded Wilson that he ought to have known that Don Enrique de Vedia, who had published an edition of Bernal Diaz in 1853, had cited Fuentes y Guzman, whose manuscript history of Guatemala was before that editor, as referring in it to the manuscript of Bernal Diaz (his great-grandfather), which was then in existence,—a verity and no myth. Further than this, Brasseur de Bourbourg, who chanced then to be in Boston, bore testimony that he had seen and used the autograph manuscript of Bernal Diaz in the archives of Guatemala.

In regard to the credibility of the accounts which Prescott depends upon, his editor,[1230] Mr. Kirk, has not neglected to cite the language of Mr. E. B. Tylor, in his Anahuac,[1231] where he says, respecting his own researches on the spot, that what he saw of Mexico tended generally to confirm Prescott’s History, and but seldom to make his statements appear improbable. The impeachment of the authorities, which Wilson attacks, is to be successful, if at all, by other processes than those he employs.

Meanwhile Arthur Helps,[1232] in tracing the rise of negro slavery and the founding of colonial government in Spanish America, had published his Conquerors of the New World and their Bondsmen (London, 1848-1852),—a somewhat speculative essay, which, with enlargement of purpose and more detail, resulted in 1855-1861 in the publication of his Spanish Conquest in America, reprinted in New York in 1867. He gives a glowing account of the Aztec civilization, and, excerpting the chapters on the Conquest, he added some new details of the private life of Cortés, and published it separately in 1871 as an account of that leader, which is attractive as a biography, if not comprehensive as a history of the Conquest. “Every page affords evidence of historic lore,” says Field, “and almost every sentence glows with the warmth of his philanthropy.”[1233] Helps has himself told the object and method of his book, and it is a different sort of historical treatment from all the others which we are passing in review. “To bring before the reader, not conquest only, but the results of conquest; the mode of colonial government which ultimately prevailed; the extirpation of native races, the introduction of other races, the growth of slavery, and the settlement of the encomiendas on which all Indian society depended,—has been the object of this history.”[1234]

Among the later works not in English we need not be detained long. The two most noteworthy in French are the Histoire des nations civilisées du Mexique of Brasseur de Bourbourg, more especially mentioned on another page, and Michel Chevalier’s Mexique avant et pendant la Conquête, published at Paris in 1845.[1235] In German, Theodor Arnim’s Das Alte Mexico und die eroberung Neu Spaniens durch Cortes, Leipsic, 1865, is a reputable book.[1236] In Spanish, beside the Vida de Cortés given by Icazbalceta in his Coleccion, vol. i. p. 309, there is the important work of Lúcas Alaman, the Disertaciones sobre la Historia de la República Mejicana, published at Mexico in three volumes in 1844-1849, which is a sort of introduction to his Historia de Méjico, in five volumes, published in 1849-1852.[1237] He added not a little in his appendixes from the archives of Simancas, and the latter book is considered the best of the histories in Spanish. In 1862 Francisco Carbajal Espinosa’s Historia de México, bringing the story down from the earliest times, was begun in Mexico. Bancroft calls it pretentious, and mostly borrowed from Clavigero.[1238]

Returning to the English tongue, in which the story of Mexico has been so signally told more than once from the time of Robertson, we find still the amplest contribution in the History of Mexico, a part of the extended series of the History of the Pacific States, published under the superintendence of Hubert H. Bancroft. Of Bancroft and these books mention is made in another place. The Mexico partakes equally of the merits and demerits attaching to his books and their method. It places the student under more obligations than any of the histories of the Conquest which have gone before, though one tires of the strained and purely extraneous classical allusions,—which seem to have been affected by his staff, or by some one on it, during the progress of this particular book of the series.

G. Yucatan.—With the subsequent subjugation of Yucatan Cortés had nothing to do. Francisco de Montejo had been with Grijalva when he landed at Cozumel on the Yucatan coast, and with Cortés when he touched at the same island on his way to Mexico. After the fall of the Aztecs, Montejo was the envoy whom Cortés sent to Spain, and while there the Emperor commissioned him (Nov. 17, 1526) to conduct a force for the settlement of the peninsula. Early in 1527 Montejo left Spain with Alonso de Avila as second in command. For twenty years and more the conquest went on, with varying success. At one time not a Spaniard was left in the country. No revolts of the natives occurred after 1547, when the conquest may be considered as complete. The story is told with sufficient fulness in Bancroft’s Mexico.[1239] The main sources of our information are the narrative of Bernal Diaz, embodying the reports of eye-witnesses, and the histories of Oviedo and Herrera. Bancroft[1240] gives various incidental references. The more special authorities, however, are the Historia de Yucathan of Diego Lopez Cogolludo, published at Madrid in 1688,[1241] who knew how to use miracles for his reader’s sake, and who had the opportunity of consulting most that had been written, and all that had been printed up to his time. He closes his narrative in 1665.[1242] The Bishop of Yucatan, Diego de Landa, in his Relation des choses de Yucatan, as the French translation terms it, has left us the only contemporary Spanish document of the period of the Conquest. The book is of more interest in respect to the Maya civilization than as to the progress of the Spanish domination. It was not printed till it was edited by Brasseur de Bourbourg, with an introduction, and published in Paris in 1864.[1243]

Landa was born in 1524, and was one of the first of his Order to come to Yucatan, where he finally became Bishop of Mérida in 1572, and died in 1579. Among the books commonly referred to for the later period is the first part (the second was never published) of Juan de Villagutierre Sotomayor’s Historia de la Conquista de la provincia de el Itza, etc., Madrid, 1701. It deals somewhat more with the spiritual and the military conquests, but writers find it important.[1244]

The latest English history of the peninsula is that by Charles St. J. Fancourt, History of Yucatan, London, 1854;[1245] but a more extended, if less agreeable, book is Ancona’s Historia de Yucatan desde la época mas remota hasta nuestros dias, published at Mérida in four volumes in 1878-1880. It gives references which will be found useful.[1246]

H. Bibliography of Mexico.—The earliest special bibliography of Mexico of any moment is that which, under the title of Catalogo de sa museo historico Indiano, is appended to Boturini Benaduci’s Idea de una nueva historia general de la America septentrional (Madrid, 1746), which was the result of eight years’ investigations into the history of Mexico. He includes a list of books, maps, and manuscripts, of which the last remnants in 1853 were in the Museo Nacional in Mexico.[1247] Of the list of New Spain authors by Eguiara y Eguren, only a small part was published in 1755 as Bibliotheca Mexicana.[1248] It was intended to cover all authors born in New Spain; but though he lived to arrange the work through the letter J, only A, B, and C were published. All titles are translated into Latin. Its incompleteness renders the bibliographical parts of Maneiro’s De Vitis Mexicanorum (1791) more necessary, and makes Beristain’s Bibliotheca Hispano-Americano Septentrional,[1249] of three volumes, published at Mexico in 1816, 1819, and 1821, of more importance than it would otherwise be. Beristain, also, only partly finished his work; but a nephew completed the publication. It has become rare; and its merits are not great, though its notices number 3,687.

Of more use to the student of the earlier history, however, is the list which Clavigero gives in his Storia del Messico published in 1780. A Jesuit, and a collector, having a book-lover’s keen scent, he surpassed all writers on the theme who had preceded him, in amassing the necessary stores for his special use. Since his day the field has been surveyed more systematically both by the general and special bibliographers. The student of early Spanish-Mexican history will of course not forget the help which he can get from general bibliographers like Brunet, from the Dictionary of Sabin, the works of Ternaux and Harrisse, the Carter-Brown Catalogue, not to speak of other important library catalogues.

The sale catalogues are not without assistance. Principal among them are the collections which had been formed by the Emperor Maximilian of Mexico,—which was sold in Leipsic in 1869 as the collection of José Maria Andrade,[1250]—and the Bibliotheca Mexicana formed by José Fernando Ramirez, which was sold in London in 1880.[1251]

All other special collections on Mexico have doubtless been surpassed by that which has been formed in San Francisco by Mr. Hubert Howe Bancroft, as a component part of his library pertaining to the western slope of America. Lists of such titles have been prefixed to his histories of Central America and of Mexico, and are to be supplemented by others as his extended work goes on. He has explained, in his preface to his Mexico (p. viii), the wealth of his manuscript stores; and it is his custom, as it was Prescott’s, to append to his chapters, and sometimes to passages of the text, considerable accounts, with some bibliographical detail, of the authorities with which he deals.[1252] Helps, though referring to his authorities, makes no such extended references to them.[1253]

---

[DISCOVERIES]

ON THE

PACIFIC COAST OF NORTH AMERICA.

BY THE EDITOR.

THE cartographical history of the Pacific coast of North America is one of shadowy and unstable surmise long continued.[1254] The views of Columbus and his companions, as best shown in the La Cosa and Ruysch maps,[1255] precluded, for a considerable time after the coming of Europeans, the possibility of the very existence of such a coast; since their Asiatic theory of the new-found lands maintained with more or less modification a fitful existence for a full century after Columbus. In many of the earliest maps the question was avoided by cutting off the westerly extension of the new continent by the edge of the sheet;[1256] but the confession of that belief was still made sometimes in other ways, as when, in the Portuguese portolano, which is placed between 1516 and 1520, Mahometan flags are placed on the coasts of Venezuela and Nicaragua.[1257]

In 1526 a rare book of the monk Franciscus, De orbis situ ac descriptione Francisci epistola,[1258] contained a map which represented South America as a huge island disjoined from the Asiatic coast by a strait in the neighborhood of Tehuantepec, with the legend, “Hoc orbis hemisphærium cedit regi Hispaniæ.”[1259] A few years later we find two other maps showing this Asiatic connection,—one of which, the Orontius Finæus globe, is well known, and is the earliest engraved map showing a return to the ideas of Columbus. It appeared in the Paris edition of the Novus Orbis of Simon Grynæus, in 1532,[1260] and was made the previous year. It is formed on a cordiform projection, and is entitled “Nova et integra universi orbis descriptio.” It is more easily understood by a reference to Mr. Brevoort’s reduction of it to Mercator’s projection, as shown in another volume.[1261] The same map, with a change in the inserted type dedication, appeared in the Pomponius Mela of 1540,[1262] and it is said also to be found much later in the Geografia of Lafreri published at Rome, 1554-1572.

SLOANE MANUSCRIPTS, 1530.

This follows a drawing in Kohl’s Washington Collection.

RUSCELLI, 1544.

This follows a sketch given by Dr. Kohl in his Discovery of Maine, pl. xv., which is also copied in Bancroft’s Central America, vol. i. p. 148. Cf. Lelewel, p. 170; Peschel, Geschichte der Erdkunde (1865), p. 371.

The other of the two maps already referred to belongs to a manuscript, De Principiis Astronomiæ, preserved in the British Museum among the Sloane manuscripts.[1263] It closely resembles the Finæus map. The authorities place it about 1530, or a little later. In 1533, in his Opusculum Geographicum, Schöner maintained that the city of Mexico was the Quinsay of Marco Polo; and about the same time Francis I., in commissioning Cartier for his explorations, calls the St. Lawrence valley a part of Asia.

What is known as the Nancy Globe preserved the same idea, as will be seen by the sketch of it annexed, which follows an engraving published in the Compte Rendu of the Congrès des Américanistes.[1264]

THE NANCY GLOBE.

The same view is maintained in a manuscript map of Ruscelli, the Italian geographer, preserved in the British Museum. Perhaps the earliest instance of a connection of America and Europe, such as Ruscelli here imagines, is the map of “Schondia,” which Ziegler the Bavarian published in his composite work at Strasburg in 1532,[1265] in which it will be observed he makes “Bacallaos” a part of Greenland, preserving the old notion prevailing before Columbus, as shown in the maps of the latter part of the fifteenth century, that Greenland was in fact a prolongation of northwestern Europe, as Ziegler indicates at the top of his map, the western half of which only is here reproduced.

ZIEGLER’S SCHONDIA, 1532.

This is a fac-simile made from Mr. Charles Deane’s (formerly the Murphy) copy. Cf. Dr. A. Breusing’s Leitfaden durch das Wiegenalter der Kartographie bis zum Jahre 1600, Frankfurt a. M., 1883, p. 11.

In this feature, as in others, there is a resemblance in these maps of Ziegler and Ruscelli to two maps by Jacopo Gastaldi, “le coryphée des géographes de péninsule italique,” as Lelewel[1266] calls him. These maps appeared in the first Italian edition of Ptolemy, published at Venice in 1548.[1267]

The first (no. 59), inscribed “Dell’universale nuova,” is an elliptical projection of the globe, showing a union of America and Asia, somewhat different in character of contour from that represented in the other (no. 60), a “Carta Marina Universale,” of which an outline sketch is annexed.

CARTA MARINA, 1548.

The key is as follows:

1. Norvegia.
2. Laponia.
3. Gronlandia.
4. Tierra del Labrador.
5. Tierra del Bacalaos.
6. La Florida.
7. Nueva Hispania.
8. Mexico.
9. India Superior.
10. La China.
11. Ganges.
12. Samatra.
13. Java.
14. Panama.
15. Mar del Sur.
16. El Brasil.
17. El Peru.
18. Strecho de Fernande Magalhaes.
19. Tierra del Fuego.

This map is also reproduced in Nordenskiöld’s Bröderna Zenos, Stockholm, 1883.

VOPELLIO, 1556.
(Reduction of western half.)

This same map was adopted (as no. 2) by Ruscelli in the edition of Ptolemy which he published at Venice in 1561,[1268] though in the “Orbis descriptio” (no. 1) of that edition Ruscelli hesitates to accept the Asiatic theory and indicates a “littus incognitum,” as Gastaldi did in the map which he made for Ramusio in 1550.

Wuttke[1269] has pointed out two maps preserved in the Palazzo Riccardi at Florence, which belong to about the year 1550, and show a similar Asiatic connection.[1270] The map of Gaspar Vopellius, or Vopellio (1556), also extended the California coast to the Ganges. It appeared in connection with Girava’s Dos Libros de Cosmographia, Milan, 1556,[1271] but when a new titlepage was given to the same sheets in 1570, it is doubtful if the map was retained, though Sabin says it should have the map.[1272] The Italian cartographer, Paulo de Furlani, made a map in 1560, which according to Kohl is preserved in the British Museum. It depicts Chinamen and elephants in the region of the Mississippi Valley.

PAULO DE FURLANI’S MAP, 1560.

The key is this:

1. Oceano settentrionale.
2. Canada.
3. panaman.
4. Mexico.
5. s. tomas.
6. Nova Ispania.
7. Cipola.
8. Le sete cita.
9. Topira.
10. tontontean.
11. Zangar.
12. Tebet.
13. Quisai.
14. Cimpaga.
15. Golfo de Tonza.
16. Ys. de las ladrones.
17. mangi.
18. mar de la china.

From Kohl’s sketch, preserved in his manuscript in the library of the American Antiquarian Society, the annexed outline is drawn. Furlani is reported to have received it from a Spanish nobleman, Don Diego Hermano, of Toledo.[1273] The connection with Asia is again adhered to in Johannes Myritius’s Opusculum geographicum, where the map is dated 1587, though the book was published at Ingolstadt in 1590.[1274] Just at this time Livio Sanuto, in his Geografia distinta (Venice, 1588), was disputing the Asiatic theory on the ground that the Mexicans would not have shown surprise at horses in Cortés’ time, if they had formerly been inhabitants of a continent like Asia, where horses are common. Perhaps the latest use of the type of map shown in the “Carta Marina” of 1548 was just a half century later, in 1598, in an edition of Ortelius, Il Theatro del mondo, published at Brescia. The belief still lingered for many years yet in some quarters; and Thomas Morton in 1636 showed that in New England it was not yet decided whether the continent of America did not border upon the country of the Tartars.[1275] Indeed, the last trace of the assumption was not blown away till Behring in 1728 passed from the Pacific to the Arctic seas.

Such is in brief the history of the inception and decline of the belief in the prolongation of Asia over against Spain, as Toscanelli had supposed in 1474, and as had been suspected by geographers at intervals since the time of Eratosthenes.[1276] The beginning of the decline of such belief is traced to the movements of Cortés. Balboa in 1513 by his discovery of the South Sea, later to be called the Pacific Ocean,[1277] had established the continental form of South America, whose limits southward were fixed by Magellan in 1520; but it was left for Cortés to begin the exploration to the north which Behring consummated.

After the Congress of Badajos had resolved to effect a search for a passage through the American barrier to the South Sea, the news of such a determination was not long in reaching Cortés in Mexico, and we know from his fourth letter, dated Oct. 15, 1524, that it had already reached him, and that he had decided to take part in the quest himself by despatching an expedition towards the Baccalaos on the hither side; while he strove also to connect with the discoveries of Magellan on the side of the South Sea.[1278] Cortés had already been led in part by the reports of Balboa’s discovery, and in part by the tidings which were constantly reaching him of a great sea in the direction of Tehuantepec, to establish a foothold on its coast, as the base for future maritime operations. So his explorers had found a fit spot in Zacatula, and thither he had sent colonists and shipwrights to establish a town and build a fleet,[1279] the Emperor meanwhile urging him speedily to use the vessels in a search for the coveted strait, which would open a shorter passage than Magellan had found to the Spice Islands.[1280] But Cortés’ attention was soon distracted by his Honduras expedition, and nothing was done till he returned from that march, when he wrote to the Emperor, Sept. 3, 1526, offering to conduct his newly built fleet to the Moluccas.

THE PACIFIC, 1513.

Kohl gives this old Portuguese chart of the Pacific in his Washington Collection, after an original preserved in the military archives at Munich, which was, as he thinks possible, made by some pilot accompanying Antonio da Miranda de Azevedo, who conducted a Portuguese fleet to the Moluccas in 1513 to join the earlier expedition (1511) under D’Abreu and Serraō. A legend at Maluca marks these islands as the place “where the cloves grow,” while the group south of them is indicated as the place “where nutmegs grow.” The coast on the right must stand for the notion then prevailing of the main of America, which was barring the Spanish progress from the east.

Of the early maps of the Moluccas, there is one by Baptista Agnese in his portolano of 1536, preserved in the British Museum; one by Diego. Homem in a similar atlas, dated 1558, likewise in the Museum; and one of 1568, by J. Martines. Copies of these are all included in Kohl’s Washington Collection.

But two other fleets were already on the way thither,—one under Garcia de Loaysa which left Spain in August, 1525, and the other under Sebastian Cabot, who stopped on the way at La Plata, had left in April, 1526. So Cortés finally received orders to join with his fleet that of Loaysa, who had indeed died on his voyage, and of his vessels only one had reached the Moluccas. Another, however, had sought a harbor not far from Zacatula, and had brought Cortés partial tidings at least of the mishaps of Loaysa’s undertaking.[1281] What information the rescued crew could give was made use of, and Cortés, bearing the whole expense, for a reimbursement of which he long sued the home Government, sent out his first expedition on the Pacific, under the command of his cousin Alvaro de Saavedra Ceron, armed with letters for Cabot, whose delay at La Plata was not suspected, and with missives for sundry native potentates of the Spice Islands and that region.[1282]

After an experimental trip up the coast, in July, 1527,[1283] two larger vessels and a brigantine set sail Oct. 31, 1527. But mishap was in store. Saavedra alone reached the Moluccas, the two other vessels disappearing forever. He found there a remnant of Loaysa’s party, and, loading his ship with cloves, started to return, but died midway, when the crew headed their ship again for the Moluccas, where they fell at last into Portuguese prisons, only eight of them finally reaching Spain in 1534.

It will be remembered that the Portuguese, following in the track of Vasco da Gama, had pushed on beyond the great peninsula of India, and had reached the Moluccas in 1511, where they satisfied themselves, if their longitude was substantially correct, that there was a long space intervening yet before they would confront the Spaniards, pursuing their westerly route. It was not quite so certain, however, whether the line of papal demarcation, which had finally been pushed into the mid-ocean westerly from the Azores, would on this opposite side of the globe give these islands to Spain or to themselves. The voyage of Magellan, as we shall see, seemed to bring the solution near; and if we may believe Scotto, the Genoese geographer, at about the same date (1520) the Portuguese had crossed the Pacific easterly and struck our northwest coast.[1284] The mishaps of Loaysa and Saavedra, as well as a new understanding between the rival crowns of the Iberian peninsula, closed the question rather abruptly through a sale in 1529—the treaty of Saragossa—by Spain, for 350,000 ducats, to Portugal of all her rights to the Moluccas under the bull of demarcation.[1285]

Cortés, on his return from Spain (1530), resolved to push his discoveries farther up the coast. The Spaniards had now occupied Tehuantepec, Acapulco, and Zacatula on the sea, and other Spaniards were also to be found at Culiacan, just within the Gulf of California on its eastern shore. The political revolutions in Cortés’ absence had caused the suspension of work on a new fleet, and Cortés was obliged to order the construction of another; and the keels of two were laid at Tehuantepec, and two others at Acapulco. In the early part of 1532 they were launched, and in May or June two ships started under Hurtado de Mendoza, with instructions which are preserved to us. It is a matter of doubt just how far he went,[1286] and both vessels were lost. Nuño de Guzman, who held the region to the north,[1287] obstructed their purpose by closing his harbors to them and refusing succor; and Cortés was thus made to feel the deadliness of his rivalry. The conqueror now himself repaired to Tehuantepec, and superintended in person, working with his men, the construction of two other ships. These, the “San Lazaro” and “Concepcion,” under Diego Becerra, left port on the 29th of October, 1533, and being blown to sea, they first saw land in the latitude of 29° 30´ north on the 18th of December, when, coasting south and east, they developed the lower parts of the Californian peninsula. Mutiny, and attacks of the natives, during one of which the chief pilot Ximenes was killed, were the hapless accompaniments of the undertaking, and during stress of weather the vessels were separated. The “San Lazaro” finally returned to Acapulco, but the “Concepcion” struggled in a crippled condition into a port within Guzman’s province, where the ship was seized. A quarrel ensued before the Audiencia, Cortés seeking to recover his vessel; but he prospered little in his suit, and was driven to undertake another expedition under his own personal lead. Sending three armed vessels up the coast to Chiametla, where Guzman had seized the “Concepcion,” Cortés went overland himself, accompanied by a force which Guzman found it convenient to avoid. Here he joined his vessels and sailed away with a part of his land forces to the west; and on the 1st of May, 1535, he landed at the Bay of Santa Cruz, where Ximenes had been killed. What parts of the lower portion of the Californian peninsula Cortés now coasted we know from his map, preserved in the Spanish Archives,[1288] which accompanied the account of his taking possession of the new land of Santa Cruz, “discovered by Cortés, May 3, 1535,” as the paper reads. The point of occupation seems to have been the modern La Paz, called by him Santa Cruz. The notary’s account of the act of possession goes on to say,[1289]—

“On the third day of May, in the year of our Lord 1535, on the said day, it may be at the hour of noon, be the same less or more, the very illustrious Lord don Hernando Cortés, Marquis of the Valley of Guaxaca, Captain-general of New Spain and of the Southern Sea for his Majesty, etc., arrived in a port and bay of a country newly discovered in the same Southern Sea, with a ship and armament of the said Lord Marquis, at which said port his Lordship arrived with ships and men, and landed on the earth with his people and horses; and standing on the shore of the sea there, in presence of me Martin de Castro, notary of their Majesties and notary of the Administration of the said Lord Marquis, and in presence of the required witnesses, the said Lord Marquis spoke aloud and said that he, in the name of His Majesty, and in virtue of his royal provision, and in fulfilment of His Majesty’s instructions regarding discovery in the said Southern Sea, had discovered with his ship and armament the said land, and that he had come with his armament and people to take possession of it.”

Finding his men and horses insufficient for the purposes of the colony which he intended to establish, Cortés despatched orders to the main for assistance, and, pending its arrival, coursed up the easterly side of the gulf, and opportunely fell in with one of his vessels, much superior to his own brigantine. So he transferred his flag, and, returning to Santa Cruz, brought relief to an already famishing colony.

News reaching him of the appointment of Mendoza as viceroy, Cortés felt he had greater stake in Mexico, and hurriedly returned.[1290] Not despairing of better success in another trial, and spurred on by indications that the new viceroy would try to anticipate him, he got other vessels, and, putting Francisco de Ulloa in charge, despatched them (July 8, 1539) before Guzman’s plan for their detention could be put into execution. Ulloa proceeded up the gulf nearly to its head, and satisfied himself that no practicable water passage, at least, could bring him to the ocean in that direction, as Cortés had supposed.[1291] Ulloa now turned south, and following the easterly coast of the peninsula rounded its extremity, and coursed it northerly to about 28° north latitude, without finding any cut-off on that side. So he argued for its connection with the main.[1292]

CORTES’ MAP OF THE GULF OF CALIFORNIA.

And here Cortés’ connection with discoveries on the Pacific ends; for Mendoza, who had visions of his own, thwarted him in all subsequent attempts, till finally Cortés himself went to Spain. The name which his captains gave to the gulf, the Sea of Cortés, failed to abide. It grew to be generally called the Red Sea, out of some fancied resemblance, as Wytfliet says, to the Red Sea of the Old World. This appellation was supplanted in turn by the name of California, which, it is contended, was given to the peninsula by Cortés himself.[1293]

The oldest map which we were supposed to possess of these explorations about the gulf,[1294] before Dr. Hale brought the one, already mentioned, from Spain, was that of Castillo, of which a fac-simile is herewith given as published by Lorenzana in 1770, at Mexico, in his Historia de Nueva España. Castillo was the pilot of the expedition, sent by Mendoza to co-operate by sea with the famous expedition of Coronado,[1295] and which the viceroy put under the command of Hernando d’Alarcon. The fleet, sailing in May, 1540, reached the head of the gulf, and Alarcon ascended the Colorado in boats; but Marcou[1296] thinks he could not have gone up to the great cañon, which however he must have reached if his supposed latitude of 36° is correct. He failed to open communication with Coronado, but buried some letters under a cross, which one of that leader’s lieutenants subsequently found.[1297]

CASTILLO’S MAP, 1541.

This map is marked “Domingo del Castillo, piloto me fecit en Mexico, año del nacimiento de N. S. Jesu Christo de M. D. XLI.” Bancroft, Central America, vol. i. p. 153, gives a sketch of this map, and again in North Mexican States, i. 81; but he carries the outer coast of the peninsula too far to the west.

In 1542 and 1543 an expedition which started under Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, a Portuguese in the Spanish service, explored the coast as far as 44° north,[1298] reaching that point by coasting from 33°, where he struck the land. He made a port which he calls San Miguel, which Bancroft is inclined to believe is San Diego; but the accounts are too confused to track him confidently,[1299] and it is probable that Cabrillo’s own vessel did not get above 38°, for Cabrillo himself died Jan. 3, 1543, his chief pilot, Ferrelo (or Ferrer), continuing the explorations.[1300] Bancroft does not think that the pilot passed north of Cape Mendocino in 40° 26´.

Thus from the time when Balboa discovered the South Sea, the Spanish had taken thirty years to develop the coast northerly, to the latitude of Oregon. In this distance they had found nothing of the Straits of Anian, which, if Humboldt[1301] is correct, had begun to take form in people’s minds ever since Cortereal, in 1500, had supposed Hudson’s Straits to be the easterly entrance of a westerly passage.[1302]

HOMEM, ABOUT 1540.

This follows Kohl’s drawing, of which a portion is also given in his Discovery of Maine, p. 298. It is evidently of a later date than another of his in which the west coast is left indefinite, and which is assigned to about 1530. In the present map he apparently embodied Cabot’s discoveries in the La Plata, but had not heard of Orellana’s exploration of the Amazon in 1542; though he had got news of it when he made his map of 1558. A marked peculiarity of the map is the prolongation of northwestern Europe as “Terra Nova,” which probably means Greenland,—a view entertained before Columbus.

There seems to have been a general agreement among cartographers for some years yet to consider the newly discovered California as a peninsula, growing out of the concurrent testimony of those who, subsequent to Cortés’ own expedition, had tracked both the gulf and the outer coast. The Portuguese map given by Kunstmann[1303] shows it as such, though the map cannot be so early as that geographer places its anterior limit (1530), since the development of the gulf could not have been made earlier than 1535; unless by chance there were explorations from the Moluccas, of which we have no record. The map in this part bears a close resemblance to a manuscript chart in the British Museum, placed about 1536, and it seems probable that this is the approximate date of that in Kunstmann. The California peninsula is shown in much the same way in a map which Major ascribes to Baptista Agnese, and places under 1539.[1304] It belongs (pl. iv.) to what has been sometimes spoken of as an atlas of Philip II. inscribed to Charles V., but in fact it was given to Philip by Charles.[1305] Its essential features were almost exactly reproduced in a draft of the New World (preserved in the British Museum) assigned to about 1540, and held to be the work of the Portuguese hydrographer Homem.

Apian[1306] and Münster[1307] in 1540, and Mercator in 1541,[1308] while boldly delineating a coast which extends farther north than Cabrillo had reached in 1542, wholly ignore this important feature. Not so, however, Sebastian Cabot in his famous Mappemonde of 1544, as will be seen by the annexed sketch. The idea of Münster, as embodied in his edition of Ptolemy in 1540,[1309] already referred to, was continued without essential change in the Basle edition of Ptolemy in 1545.[1310] In 1548 the “carta marina” of Gastaldi as shown on a previous page,[1311] clearly defined the peninsula, while merging the coast line above into that of Asia. The peninsula was also definitely marked in several of the maps preserved in the Riccardi palace at Florence, which are supposed to be of about the middle of the sixteenth century.[1312]

CABOT, 1544.

Sketched from a photograph of the original mappemonde in the great library at Paris.

In the map of Juan Freire, 1546, we have a development of the coast northward from the peninsula, for which it is not easy to account; and the map is peculiar in other respects. The annexed sketch of it follows Kohl’s drawing of an old portolano, which he took from the original while it was in the possession of Santarem. Freire, who was a Portuguese hydrographer, calls it a map of the Antipodes, a country discovered by Columbus, the Genoese. It will be observed that about the upper lake we have the name “Bimini regio,” applied to Florida after the discovery of Ponce de Leon, because of the supposition that the fountain of youth existed thereabout. The coasts on both sides of the gulf are described as the discovery of Cortés. There seems to be internal evidence that Freire was acquainted with the reports of Ulloa and Alarcon, and the chart of Castillo; but it is not so clear whence he got the material for his draft of the more westerly portions of the coast, which, it will be observed, are given much too great a westerly trend. The names upon it do not indicate any use of Cabrillo’s reports; though from an inscription upon this upper coast Freire credits its discovery to the Spaniards, under orders from the emperor, conducted by one Villalobos. Kohl could not find any mention of such an explorer, but conjectured he was perhaps the one who before Cabrillo, as Herrera mentions, had named a river somewhere near 30° north latitude “Rio de Nuestra Señora,” and which Cabrillo sought. Kohl also observes that though the coast line is continuous, there are places upon it marked “land not seen,” with notes of its being again seen west of such places; and from this he argues that the expedition went up and not down the coast. It not unlikely had some connection with the fleet which Ruy Lopez de Villalobos conducted under Mendoza’s orders, in November, 1542, across the Pacific to the islands on the Asiatic coast.[1313]

FREIRE, 1546.

This is sketched from a drawing in the Kohl Collection at Washington.

PTOLEMY, 1548.

Key:

1. Basos.
2. Ancoras.
3. p^o. balenas.
4. S. Tomas.
5. C:+
6. Mar Vermeio.
7. b: canoas.
8. p^o. secōdido.
9. R. tontonteanc.
10. p^o. tabursa.
11. puercos.
12. s. franc^o.
13. b: de s.+
14. Vandras.
15. Ciguata.
16. s. tiago.

In 1554 Agnese again depicts the gulf, but does not venture upon drawing the coast above the peninsula, which in turn in the Vopellio map of 1556,[1314] and in that in Ramusio the same year,[1315] is made much broader, the gulf indenting more nearly at a right angle. The Homem map of 1558, preserved in the British Museum, returns to the more distinctive peninsula,[1316] though it is again somewhat broadened in the Martines map of about the same date, which also is of interest as establishing a type of map for the shores of the northern Pacific, and for prefiguring Behring’s Straits, which we shall later frequently meet. Mention has already been made of the Furlani map of 1560 for its Asiatic connections, while it still clearly defined the California peninsula.[1317] The Ruscelli map in the Ptolemy of 1561 again preserves the peninsula, while marking the more northerly coasts with a dotted line, in its general map of the New World; but the “Mar Vermeio” in its map of “Nueva Hispania” is the type of the gulf given in the 1548 edition. The Martines type again appears in the Zaltieri map of 1566, which is thought to be the earliest engraved map to show the Straits of Anian.[1318]

MARTINES, 155-(?).

This sketch follows a copy by Kohl (Washington Collection) of the general map of the world, contained in a manuscript vellum atlas in the British Museum (no. 9,814), from the collection of the Duke de Cassano Serra. It is elaborately executed with miniatures and figures. The language of the map is chiefly Italian, with some Spanish traces. Kohl believes it to be the work of Joannes Martines, the same whose atlas of 1578 is also in the Museum, and whose general map (1578) agrees in latitudes and other particulars with this. The present one lacks degrees of longitude, which the 1578 map has, as well as the name “America,” wanting also in this. Kohl places it not long after the middle of the sixteenth century. In the Catalogue of Manuscript Maps, i. 29, the atlas of 1578 is mentioned as containing the following numbers relating to America: 1. The world. 2. The two hemispheres. 3. The world in gores. 10. West coast of America. 11. Coast of Mexico. 12-13. South America. 14. Gulf of Mexico. 15. Part of the east coast of North America.

In the Museum manuscripts, no. 22,018, is a portolano by Martines, dated 1579; and another, of date 1582, is entered in the 1844 edition of the Catalogue of Manuscript Maps, i. 31. Kohl’s Washington Collection includes two Martines maps of 1578.

The manuscript map of Diegus (Homem) of 1568, in the Royal Library in Dresden, gives the peninsula, but turns the more northerly coast abruptly to the east, connecting it with the archipelago, which stands for the St. Lawrence in his map of 1558.[1319]

The great Mappemonde of Mercator, published at Duisburg in 1569, in which he introduced his new projection,[1320] as will be seen by the annexed sketch,[1321] keeps to the Martines type; and while it depicts the Straits of Anian, it renders uncertain, by interposing a vignette, the passage by the north from the Atlantic to the Pacific.[1322] The next year Ortelius followed the same type in his Theatrum orbis terrarum,—the prototype of the modern atlas.[1323]

A similar western coast[1324] is defined by Porcacchi, in his L’ isole piu famose del mondo, issued at Venice in 1572.[1325]

The peninsula of California, but nothing north of it, is again delineated in a Spanish mappemonde of 1573, shown in Lelewel.[1326] The Mercator type is followed in the maps which are dated 1574, but which appeared in the Theatri orbis terrarum enchiridion of Philippus Gallæus, published at Antwerp in 1585.[1327]

ZALTIERI, 1566.

It was published at Venice, and was in part followed by Ortelius in 1570. It is also sketched in Vol. IV. p. 93.

In the same year the Italian cartographer Furlani, or Forlani, showed how he had advanced from the views which he held in 1560, in a map of the northern Pacific, which is annexed.[1328] It is the earliest map in which Japan has been noted as having its greatest length east and west; for Ortelius and others always give it an extension on the line of the meridian.

MERCATOR, 1569.

Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s map in 1576 gives the straits, but he puts “Anian” on the Asiatic side, and does not indicate the Gulf of California, unless a forked bay in 35° stands for it.[1329] The map in Best’s Frobisher makes the Straits of Anian connect with “Frobisher’s straightes” to give a through passage from ocean to ocean, and depicts a distorted California peninsula.[1330]

Mention has already been made on a previous page of a Martines map of 1578. It has a similar configuration to that already shown as probably the earliest instance of its type.

PORCACCHI, 1572.

Of the explorations of Francis Drake in 1579 we have no cartographical record, except as it may be embodied in the globe of Molineaux, preserved in the Middle Temple, London, which is dated 1592, and in the map of the same cartographer, dated 1600.[1331] Molineaux seemingly made use of the results of Cabrillo’s voyage, as indicated by the Spanish names placed along the coast. It was one of the results of Drake’s voyage that the coast line of upper California took a more northerly trend. The map of Dr. Dee (1580) evidently embodied the views of the Spanish hydrographers.[1332]

In 1582 Popellinière[1333] repeated the views of Mercator and Ortelius; but in England Michael Lok in this same year began to indicate the incoming of more erroneous views.[1334] The California gulf is carried north to 45°, where a narrow strip separates it from a vague northern sea, the western extension of the sea of Verrazano.

MAP OF PAULO DE FURLANI, 1574.

Furlani is said to have received this map from a Spaniard, Don Diego Hermano de Toledo, in 1574. The sketch is made from the drawing in Kohl’s manuscript in the American Antiquarian Society Library. The key is as follows:

1. Mare incognito.
2. Stretto di Anian.
3. Quivir.
4. Golfo di Anian.
5. Anian regnum.
6. Quisau.
7. Mangi Prov.
8. Mare de Mangi.
9. Isola di Giapan.
10. Y. de Cedri.

FROM MOLINEAUX’S GLOBE, 1592.

This is sketched from a draught in the Kohl Collection. Cf. Vol. III. pp. 196, 212. The dotted line indicates the track of Drake. There has been much controversy over the latitude of Drake’s extreme northing, fixed, as it will be seen in this map, at about 48°, which is the statement of the World Encompassed, and by the Famous Voyage, at 43°. The two sides were espoused warmly and respectively by Greenhow in his Oregon and California, and by Travers Twiss in his Oregon Question, during the dispute between the United States and Great Britain about the Oregon boundary. Bancroft (Northwest Coast, vol. i. p. 144), who presents the testimony, is inclined to the lower latitude.

After the Spaniards had succeeded, in opposition to the Portuguese, in establishing a regular commerce between Acapulco and Manilla (Philippine Islands), the trade-winds conduced to bring upper California into better knowledge. The easterly trades carried their outward-bound vessels directly west; but they compelled them to make a détour northward on their return, by which they also utilized the same Japanese current which brought the Chinese to Fusang[1335] many centuries before. An expedition which Don Luis de Velasco had sent in 1564, by direction of Philip II., accompanied by Andres de Urdaneta, who had been in those seas before with Loaysa in 1525, had succeeded in making a permanent occupation of the Philippines for Spain in 1564. It became now important to find a practicable return route, and under Urdaneta’s counsel it was determined to try to find it by the north. One of the galleons deserted, and bearing northerly struck the California coast near Cape Mendocino, and arrived safe at Acapulco three months before Urdaneta himself had proved the value of his theory. The latter’s course was to skirt the coast of Japan till under 38°, when he steered southerly; and after a hard voyage, in which he saw no land and most of his crew died, he reached Acapulco in October.[1336] Other voyages were made in succeeding years, but the next of which we have particular account was that of Francisco Gali, who, returning from Macao in 1584, struck the California coast in 37° 30´, and marked a track which other navigators later followed.[1337]

The map (1587) in Hakluyt’s Paris edition of Peter Martyr conformed more nearly to the Mercator type;[1338] and Hakluyt, as well as Lok, records Drake’s discovery, both of them putting it, however, in 1580.

With the year 1588 is associated a controversy over what purports to be a memoir setting forth the passage of the ship of a Spanish navigator, Lorenzo Ferrer de Maldonado, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, through a strait a quarter of a league wide. The passage took him as high as 75°; but he reached the Pacific under the sixtieth parallel. The opening was identified by him with the long-sought Straits of Anian. The belief in this story had at one time some strong advocates, but later geographical discoveries have of course pushed it into the limbo of forgotten things; for it seems hardly possible to identify, as was done by Amoretti, the narrow passage of Maldonado, under 60°, with that which Behring discovered, sixteen leagues wide, under 65°.[1339]

SPANISH GALLEON.

A fac-simile of the sketch given in Jurien de la Gravière’s Les marins du XV^e et du XVI^e siècle.

In 1592 we have the alleged voyage of De Fuca, of which he spoke in 1596, in Venice, to Michael Lok, who told Purchas; and he in turn included it in his Pilgrims.[1340] He told Lok that he had been captured and plundered on the California coast by Cavendish,[1341]—a statement which some have thought confirmed by Cavendish’s own avowal of his taking a pilot on that coast,—and that at the north he had entered a strait a hundred miles wide, under 47° and 48°, which had a pinnacle rock at the entrance; and that within the strait he had found the coast trending northeast, bordering a sea upon which he had sailed for twenty days. This story, despite its exaggerations, and though discarded formerly, has gained some credence with later investigators; and the application of his name to the passage which leads to Puget Sound seems to have been the result of a vague and general concurrence, in the belief of some at least, that this passage must be identified with the strait which De Fuca claimed to have passed.[1342]

With the close of the sixteenth century, the maps became numerous, and are mostly of the Mercator type. Such are those of Cornelius de Judæis in 1589 and in 1593,[1343] the draughts of 1587 and 1589 included in the Ortelius of 1592,[1344] the map of 1593 in the Historiarum indicarum libri XVI. of Maffeius,[1345] and those of Plancius[1346] and De Bry.[1347] The type is varied a little in the 1592 globe of Molineaux, as already shown, and in the 1587 map of Myritius we have the Asiatic connection of the upper coast as before mentioned; but in the Ptolemy of 1597 the contour of Mercator is still essentially followed.[1348] In this same year (1597) the earliest distinctively American atlas was published in the Descriptionis Ptolemaicæ Augmentum of Cornelius Wytfliet, of which an account is given in another place.[1349] Fac-similes of the maps of the Gulf of California and of the New World are annexed, to indicate the full extent of geographical knowledge then current with the best cartographers. The Mercator type for the two Americas and the great Antarctic Continent common to most maps of this period are the distinguishing features of the new hemisphere. The same characteristics pertain also to the mappemondes in the original Dutch edition of Linschoten’s Itinerario, published in two editions at Amsterdam in 1596,[1350] in Münster’s Cosmographia, 1598, and in the Brescia edition (1598) of Ortelius.

FROM WYTFLIET, 1597.

Bancroft (North Mexican States, vol. i. p. 152) sketches this map; it is also in his Northwest Coast, vol. i. p. 82.

In 1600 Metullus in his America sive novus orbis, published at Cologne, simply followed Wytfliet.[1351] From the map of Molineaux, likewise of 1600, a sketch of the California peninsula is given elsewhere.[1352] A contour of the coast more like that of the Molineaux globe figured on a preceding page belongs to the map given in the Herrera of 1601, but it also introduces views which held to a much wider separation of the shores of the north Pacific than had been maintained by the school of Mercator.[1353].

WYTFLIET, 1597.

An important voyage in both furthering and confusing the knowledge of the California coast was that of Sebastian Viscaino.[1354] This navigator, it is sometimes said, had been in a Manilla galleon which Cavendish had captured near Cape St. Lucas in 1587, when the English freebooter burned the vessel and landed her crew.[1355] He is known to have had much opportunity for acquiring familiarity with the coast; and in 1597 he had conducted an expedition to the coast of the California peninsula which had failed of success.[1356]

In 1602 (May 5) he was again despatched from Acapulco with three vessels, for the same purpose of discovering some harbor up the coast which returning vessels from the Philippines could enter for safety or repairs, and of finding the mysterious strait which led to the Atlantic. He was absent ten months.[1357] He himself went up to 42°, but one of his vessels under Martin Aguilar proceeded to 43°, where he reported that he found the entrance of a river or strait, not far from Cape Blanco;[1358] and for a long period afterwards the entrance and Aguilar’s name stood together on the maps.[1359] Buache, in his Considérations géographiques et physiques, says that it was the reports brought back from this expedition, describing an easterly trend of the coast above the 43°, which gave rise to the notion that the waters of the Gulf of California found a passage to the ocean in two ways, making an island of the peninsula. The official recorder of the expedition (Ascension) is known to have held this view. We shall see how fixed this impression later became.

Meanwhile the peninsular shape was still maintained in the map in Botero’s Relaciones Universales del mundo, published at Valladolid in 1603; in the Spanish map of 1604, made at Florence by Mathieu Neron Pecciolen (engraved for Buache in 1754); in that of Cespedes’ Regimiento de Navigacion (1606), and in that published in connection with Ferdinand de Quir’s narrative in the Detectionis Freti (1613) of Hudson’s voyage.[1360]

A map of Jodocus Hondius of about this time first gave indication of the growing uncertainty which led finally to a prevailing error regarding the head of the gulf. The map was inscribed “Vera totius expeditionis nauticæ Descriptio D. Franc. Draci,” etc., and illustrated Hondius’s edition of Drake and Cavendish’s voyages, and has been reproduced in the Hakluyt Society’s edition of The World Encompassed. The gulf is made to divide about an island at its northern end, producing two arms whose prolongation is left undecided. The circumpolar map of Hondius which appeared in Pontanus’s Amsterdam in 1611, and is given in fac-simile in Asher’s Henry Hudson, shows the Straits of Anian, but nothing more. Another Hondius map in the Mercator of 1613 turns the coast easterly, where the Straits of Anian separate it from Asia. The same atlas of 1613 contains also the America of Michael Mercator, which is of the usual Gerard Mercator type, with the enclosed northern sea contracted to narrow limits and called “Mare dulce.” A similar western coast is drawn in the America of Johannes Oliva of Marseilles, preserved in the British Museum.[1361]

In Kasper van Baerle’s edition of Herrera, published at Amsterdam in 1622, we get—as far as has been observed—the earliest[1362] insularizing of the California peninsula, and this only by a narrow thread of water connecting a large gulf below and a smaller one above. And even this attempt was neutralized by a second map in the same book, in which these two gulfs were not made to mingle their waters. A bolder and less equivocal severing of the peninsula followed in the maps of two English geographers. The first of these is the map of Master Briggs.[1363] In this the island stretches from 23° to 44°, showing Cape Blanco, with Cape Mendocino and “Po. S^r. Francisco Draco” south of it, the latter in about 38°. The map bears the following legend: “California, sometymes supposed to be part of y^e Westerne continent; but since by a Spanish charte taken by y^e Hollanders it is found to be a goodly Ilande, the length of the west shoare beeing about 500 leagues from Cape Mendocino to the south cape thereof called Cape St. Lucas, as appeareth both by that Spanish Chart, and by the relation of Francis Gaule [Gali], whereas in the ordinarie charts it is sett downe to be 1700 leagues.”[1364] The other was that given in John Speed’s Prospect, which contains one of the maps of Abraham Goos of Amsterdam, “described and enlarged by I. S. Ano. 1626.” This carries up the outer coast of the island beyond the “Po[rto] Sir Francisco Dr[ake]” and Cape Mendocino. The coast of the main opposite the northern end of the island ceases to be defined, and is continued northerly with a dotted line, while the western shore of Hudson’s Bay is also left undetermined.[1365] De Laet, however, in 1630 still kept to the peninsula, placing “Nova Albion” above it.[1366] In 1636 W. Saltonstall’s English translation of Hondius’s Mercator presents an island, with the now somewhat common break in the main coast opposite its northern end. This gap is closed up, however, in another map in the same volume.[1367]

The map in Pierre D’Avity’s Le Monde[1368] makes California a peninsula, with the river St. Lawrence rising close to it, and flowing very near also to Hudson’s Bay in its easterly passage.

The circumstantial story of Bartolemé de Fonte, whose exploits are placed in 1640, at one time commanded a certain degree of confidence, and made strange work with the cartographical ideas of the upper part of the Pacific coast. It is now believed that the story was coined by James Petiver, one of the contributors to the Monthly Miscellany, or Memoirs for the Curious, published in London in April and June, 1708, in which first appeared what purported to be a translation of a letter of a certain Admiral De Fonte.[1369] In this a Spanish navigator—whose name was possibly suggested by a veritable De Fonta who was exploring Tierra del Fuego in 1649—was made to depart from Callao, April 3, 1640, and proceed up the coast to 53°, above which he navigated a net-work of interior waters, and encountered a ship from Boston which had entered these regions from the Atlantic side.[1370] To this archipelago, as it seemed, he gave the name of St. Lazarus; and to a river, leading from a lake with an island in it, he applied that of Velasco; and these names, curiously, appear in the fanciful maps which were made by Delisle and Buache in elucidation of the voyage in which they expressed not a little faith, though the Spanish antiquaries early declared that their archives contained no record of the voyage.[1371]

The Dutch, under De Vries, in 1643 had pushed up from Japan, and discovered, as they thought, an island, “Jesso,” separated from land on the west by a water which they called the “Detroit de Vries,” and on the American side by a channel which had an uncertain extension to the north, and might after all be the long-sought Straits of Anian.[1372] The idea of an interjacent land in the north Pacific between America and Asia is also said to have grown out of the report of a Portuguese navigator, Don João da Gama, who claimed to have seen such a land in sailing from China to New Spain. It long maintained a fleeting existence on the maps.[1373]

Two maps of Petrus Koerius, dated 1646, in Speed’s Prospect (1668), indicate what variable moods geographers could assume in the same year. In one we have an island and a determinate coast line running north to the straits; in the other we have a peninsula with two different trends of the coast north of it in half-shading. We owe to an expatriated Englishman a more precise nomenclature for the western coast than we had had previous to the appearance of his maps in 1646; and the original manuscript drawings preserved at Munich are said by Dr. Hale to be richer still in names.[1374] This is the Arcano del mare of Robert Dudley. He was born in Surrey in 1573, and whether the natural or legitimate son of the Earl of Leicester depends on the proof of the secret marriage of that nobleman with Lady Sheffield. An adventurous spirit kept him away from the enjoyment of Kenilworth, which he inherited, and he was drawn nearer to the associations of the sea by marrying a sister of Cavendish. He was among the many Englishmen who tried their daring on the Spanish main. He married a second wife, a daughter of Sir Thomas Leigh, whom he abandoned, partly to be rid of a stepmother; and out of chagrin at his failure to secure the dukedom of Northumberland, which had been in abeyance since the execution of his grandfather, Lady Jane Grey’s adherent, he sold Kenilworth to young Prince Henry, and left England in company with a daughter of Sir Robert Southwell. He now gave himself up to practical seamanship and the study of hydrography. The grand-duke of Tuscany gave him employment, and he drained a morass to enable Leghorn to become a beautiful city.

DUDLEY, 1646.

Under authority of Ferdinand II., he assumed the title of Duke of Northumberland, which was recognized throughout the empire. He died in 1639.[1375] The Arcano has thirty-three American maps; but the Munich manuscript shows thirteen more. One of the Pacific coast, which records Drake’s explorations, is annexed; but with Dudley’s text[1376] there is another showing the coast from Cape Mendocino south, which puts under thirty degrees north a “golfo profondo” of undefined inland limits, with “I di Cedros” off its mouth. The bay with the anchor and soundings just north of thirty degrees, called in the fac-simile “P^to di Nouova Albion,” corresponding, it would seem, to San Francisco, is still seen in this other chart, with a more explicit inscription,—“Po: dell nuovo Albion scoperto dal Drago C^no Inglese.”

In 1649, in Texeira’s chart, there is laid down for the first time a sketch of the coast near the Straits of Anian, which is marked as seen by João da Gama, and extends easterly from Jesso, in the latitude of 50°. Gama’s land lived for some time in the charts.[1377]

We have another of Speed’s maps, five years later (1651), which appears in the 1676 edition of his Prospect, in which that geographer is somewhat confused. He makes California an island, with a break in the coast line of the main opposite its northern extremity, and its northwest point he calls “C. Mendocino,” while “Pt. Sir Francisco Draco” is placed south of it; but rather confusedly another Cape Mendocino projects from the main coast considerably further to the north.[1378] A map of Visscher in 1652[1379] reverts, however, to the anterior notions of Mercator; but when in 1655 Wright, an Englishman, adopted Mercator’s projection, and first made it really serviceable for navigation, in his Certain Errors in Navigation, he gave an insular shape to California.

The French geographer Nicolas Sanson[1380] introduced a new notion in 1656. California was made an island with “P^to de Francisco Draco” on the west side, somewhat south of the northern cape of it. On the main the coast in the same latitude is made to form a projection to the north called “Agubela de Cato,” without any extension of the shore farther northward. The map in Petavius’s (Petau’s) History of the World (London, 1659) carries the coast up, but leaves a gap opposite the northern end of the insular California. The atlas of Van Loon (1661) converts the gap into the Straits of Anian, and puts a “terra incognita” north of it. Danckerts of Amsterdam in the same year (1661), and Du Val in various maps of about this time make it an island. The map of 1663, which appeared in Heylin’s Cosmographie,[1381] gives the insular California, and a dotted line for the main coast northward, with three alternative directions. A map of the Sanson type is given in Blome’s Description of the World, 1670. Ogilby’s map in 1671 makes it an island,[1382] following Montanus’s Nieuwe Weereld.

Hennepin had in his 1683 map made California a peninsula, and in that of 1697 he still preserved the gulf-like character of the waters east of it; but the same plate in the 1698 edition is altered to make an island, as it still is in the edition of 1704. The French geographer Jaillot, in 1694, also conformed to the insular theory, as did Corolus Allard in his well-known Dutch atlas. Campanius, copying Hennepin, speaks of California as the largest island “which the Spaniards possess in America. From California the land extends itself [he says] to that part of Asia which is called Terra de Jesso, or Terra Esonis. The passage is only through the Straits of Anian, which hitherto has remained unknown, and therefore is not to be found in any map or chart,”—all of which shows something of Campanius’s unacquaintance with what had been surmised, at least, in cartography. All this while Blaeu in his maps was illustrating the dissolving geographical opinions of his time. In 1659 he had drawn California as an island; in 1662 as a peninsula; and once more, in 1670, as an island. Coronelli in 1680, and Franquelin in his great manuscript map of 1684 had both represented it as an island.[1383]

In 1698 the English geographer Edward Wells, in his New Sett of Maps, showed a little commendable doubt in marking the inlet just north of the island as “the supposed Straits of Anian,”—a caution which Delisle in 1700, with a hesitancy worthy of the careful hydrographer that he was destined to become, still further exemplified. While restoring California to its peninsular character, he indicated the possibility of its being otherwise by the unfinished limitations of the surrounding waters.[1384] Dampier in 1699, in chronicling the incidents of the voyage with which he was connected, made it an island.[1385]

In 1701 one would have supposed the question of the insularity of California would have been helped at least by the explorations overland of Father Kino the Jesuit which were begun in 1698. His map, based rather upon shrewd conjecture than upon geographical discovery, and showing the peninsular form of the land, was published in the Lettres Edifiantes, vol. v., in 1705.[1386] In 1705 the map in Harris’s Collection of Voyages preserves the insular character of California.[1387] In 1715 Delisle[1388] expressed himself as undecided between the two theories respecting California,[1389] but in 1717 he gave the weight of his great name[1390] to an imagined but indefinite great gulf north of the California peninsula, which held for a while a place in the geography of his time as the “Mer de l’ouest.” Homann, of Nuremberg, in 1719 marked the entrance of it, while he kept to the insular character of the land to the south; as did Seutter in his Atlas Geographicus published at Augsburg in 1720. Daniel Coxe in his Carolana had a sufficient stock of credulity—if he was not a “liar,” as Bancroft calls him[1391]—in working up some wondrous stories of interior lakes emptying into the South Sea.[1392] In 1727 the English cartographer Moll converted the same inlet into the inevitable Straits of Anian. The maps in such popular books as Shelvocke’s Voyages (1726)[1393] and Anson’s Voyages (1748), as did sundry maps issued by Vander Aa of Amsterdam, still told the mass of readers of the island of California; as had Bruzen la Martinière in his Introduction à l’histoire (1735), and Salmon (using Moll’s map of 1736) in his History of America.

Meanwhile, without knowing it because of the fogs, Behring, in 1728, had pushed through the straits now known by his name into the Arctic Seas, and had returned along the Asiatic shore in continued ignorance of his accomplishment. It was not till 1732 that another Russian expedition was driven over to the Alaskan shore; and in 1738 and 1741 Behring proved the close proximity of the two continents, and made demonstration of their severance.

At this time also the English were making renewed efforts from the side of Hudson’s Bay to reach the Pacific; and Arthur Dobbs, in his Countries adjoining to Hudson’s Bay (1744), gives a variety of reasons for supposing a passage in that direction, showing possible solutions of the problem in an accompanying map.[1394]

The Spaniards, who were before long to be spurred on to other efforts by the reports of Russian expeditions, were reviving now, through the 1728 edition of Herrera, more confidence in the peninsular character of California; though Mota Padilla in his Nueva Galicia, in 1742, still thought it an island.

The French map-maker Bellin, in his cartographical illustrations for Charlevoix in 1743, also fell into the new belief; as did Consag the Jesuit, in a map which he made in 1746.[1395]

The leading English geographer Bowen in 1747 was advocating the same view, and defining the more northerly parts as “undiscovered.” In 1748 Henry Ellis published his Voyage to Hudson’s Bay,—made in 1746-1747, and mentions a story that a high or low tide made California an island or a peninsula, and was inclined to believe in a practicable northwest passage.[1396] In 1750 Robert de Vaugondy, while preserving the peninsula, made a westerly entrance to the north of it, which he marks as the discovery of Martin d’Aguilar. The lingering suspicion of the northerly connection of the California Gulf with the ocean had now nearly vanished; and the peninsula which had been an island under Cortés, then for near a century connected with the main, and then again for more than a century in many minds an island again, was at last defined in its proper geographical relations.[1397]

The coast line long remained, however, shadowy in the higher latitudes. Buriel, in his editorial notes to Venegas’s California, in 1757, confessed that nothing was known. The French geographers, the younger Delisle and Buache,[1398] published at this time various solutions of the problem of straits and interior seas, associated with the claims of Maldonado, De Fuca, and De Fonte; and others were found to adopt, while others rejected, some of their very fanciful reconciling of conflicting and visionary evidences, in which the “Mer de l’ouest” holds a conspicuous position.[1399] The English map-maker Jefferys at the same epoch (1753) was far less complex in his supposition, and confined himself to a single “river which connects with Lake Winnepeg.” A map of 1760, “par les S^rs Sanson, rectifiée par S^r Robert,” also indicates a like westerly entrance; and Jefferys again in 1762, while he grows a little more determinate in coast lines, more explicitly fixes the passage as one that Juan de Fuca had entered in 1592.[1400] The Atlas Moderne, which was published at Paris, also in 1762, in more than one map, the work of Janvier, still clung to the varieties presented by Delisle ten years before, and which Delisle himself the next year (1763) again brought forward. In 1768 Jefferys made a map[1401] to illustrate the De Fonte narrative; but after 1775 he made several studies of the coast, and among other services reproduced the map which the Russian Academy had published, and which was a somewhat cautious draught of bits of the coast line here and there, indicating different landfalls, with a dotted connection between them.[1402] One of Jefferys’s own maps (1775) carries the coast north with indications of entrances, but without attempting to connect them with any interior water-sheds. Going north from New Albion we then find on his map the passage of D’Aguilar in 1603; then that of De Fuca, “where in 1592 he pretends he went through to the North Sea;” then the “Fousang” coast, visited by the Spaniards in 1774; then Delisle’s landfall in 1741; Behring’s the same year; while the coast stops at Mount St. Elias. In his 1776 map Jefferys gives another scheme. “Alaschka” is now an island athwart the water, dividing America from Asia, with Behring’s Straits at its western end; while the American main is made up of what was seen by Spangenberg in 1728, with a general northeasterly trend higher up, laid down according to the Japanese reports. The Spaniards were also at this time pushing up among the islands beyond the Oregon coast.[1403] In 1774 Don Juan Perez went to Nootka Sound, as is supposed, and called it San Lorenzo.[1404] In 1775 another Spanish expedition discovered the Columbia River.[1405] Janvier in 1782 published a map[1406] still perpetuating the great sea of the west, which Buache and others had delineated thirty years before. The English in 1776 transferred their endeavors from Hudson’s Bay to the Pacific coast, and Captain James Cook was despatched to strike the coast in the latitude of Drake’s New Albion, and proceed north in search of a passage eastward.[1407] Carver the traveller had already, in 1766-1768, got certain notions of the coast from Indian stories, as he heard them in the interior, and embodied them with current beliefs in a map of his own, which made a part of his Travels through the interior parts of North America, published in 1778. In this he fixed the name of Oregon for the supposed great river of the west, which remained in the end attached to the region which it was believed to water.[1408] In 1786 the Frenchman La Pérouse was on the coast.[1409] In 1789 the English and Spanish meeting on the coast, the English commander was seized. This action led to a diplomatic fence, the result of which was the surrender of Nootka to the English.

Meanwhile a Boston ship, the “Columbia,” commanded by Captain Kendrick, in company with the “Washington” (Captain Gray), was on a voyage, which was the first American attempt to sail around the globe.[1410] They entered and named the Columbia River; and meeting Vancouver, the intelligence was communicated to him. When the English commander occupied Nootka, the last vestige of uncertainty regarding the salient features of the coast may be said to have disappeared under his surveys. Before they were published, George Foster issued in 1791 his map of the northwest coast, in which the Straits of Juan de Fuca were placed below 40°, by which Captain Gray is supposed to have entered, on his way to an open sea, coming out again in 55°, through what we now know as the Dixon entrance, to the north of Queen Charlotte’s Island; the American navigator having threaded, as was supposed, a great northern archipelago. Vancouver’s own map finally cleared the remaining confusion, and the migratory Straits of Juan de Fuca were at last fixed as the channel south of Vancouver’s Island which led to Puget Sound.[1411]