[308] Ten years before this, says Humboldt, “Columbus distinctly learned, when he was coasting along the eastern shores of Veragua, that to the west of this land there was a sea ‘which in less than nine days’ sail would bear ships to the Chersonesus aurea of Ptolemy and to the mouth of the Ganges.’ In the same Carta rarissima, which contains the beautiful and poetic narration of a dream, the admiral says that ‘the opposite coasts of Veragua, near the Rio de Belen, are situated relatively to another, as Tortosa on the Mediterranean and Fuenterabia in Biscay, or as Venice and Pisa.’ The great ocean, the South Pacific, was even at that time regarded as merely a continuation of the Sinus magnus (μέγας κόλπος) of Ptolemy, situated before the golden Chersonesus, whilst Cattigara and the land of the Sines (Thinae) were supposed to constitute its eastern boundary.”—Humboldt: Cosmos. Otté’s trans. vol. ii. pp. 642, 643.
[309] Historia general. Herrera. dec. i. lib. x. cap. i, ii, iv. dec. ii. lib. i. cap. iv, xi. De Orbe Novo decades. Martire. dec. iii. cap. ii, iii, vi, x. dec. iv. cap. vi. dec. vii. cap. x.
[310] Historia general. Herrera. dec. ii. lib. i. cap. vii.
[311] Bernal Diaz del Castillo, a native of Medina del Campo, Spain, came to the New World, in 1514, with Pedro Arias de Avila, who had been appointed governor of Terra Firma. He sailed with Cordoba and Grijalva on their expeditions of discovery, and was with Cortes in his Mexican campaign, and participated in more than a hundred engagements. He was regidor of the city of Guatemala, where, on the twenty-sixth day of February, 1568, he completed his True history of the conquest of New Spain.
[312] Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España. Escrita por el Capitan Bernal Diaz del Castillo, vno de sus conquistadores. En Madrid, 1632. cap. i-vi.
Vide The memoirs of the conquistador, Bernal Diaz del Castillo, written by himself, containing a true and full account of the discovery and conquest of Mexico and New Spain. Translated from the original Spanish by John Ingrim Lockhart. London, 1844. vol. i. chap. i-vi.
[313] “The dollar of exchange (peso de plata) is worth 8 reals of old plate, or 15 reals 2 maravedis vellon.... The value of the peso of plate, or dollar of exchange, in English silver coin, is 39½d.” [about seventy-four cents United States money].—The universal cambist and commercial instructor. By Patrick Kelly. London, 1811. vol. i. pp. 388, 389.
[314] Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España. Diaz. cap. viii-xvi.—Vide The memoirs of the conquistador. Lockhart. chap. viii-xvi.
[315] “He said, though still in broken Spanish, that his name was Geronimo de Aguilar, and was a native of Ecija. About eight years ago he had been shipwrecked with fifteen men and two women, on a voyage between Darien and the island of St. Domingo.... The ship struck against a rock, and they had not been able to get her off again. The whole of the crew then got into the boat, with the hope of reaching the island of Cuba or Jamaica, but were driven on the coast of Yucatan, where the Calachionies had taken them prisoners and distributed them among the people. The most of his unfortunate companions had been sacrificed to their gods. Some had died of grief and the women had pined away, being worn out by the hard labor of grinding which they had forced them to do. He had been doomed to be sacrificed to their idols, but had made his escape at night, and fled to the cacique, with whom he had been living.... He had tried to induce Gonzalo Guerrero to leave the Indians, but had failed.”
[316] The name is spelled by Diaz “Monteçuma.”