With these white flags the natives beckoned the strangers to land; whereupon twenty soldiers were sent ashore under Francisco de Montejo, and a favorable reception being accorded them, the commander approached with his ships and landed. The utmost deference was paid the guests, for, as will hereafter more fully appear, the king of kings, Lord Montezuma, having in his capital intelligence of the strange visitors upon his eastern seaboard, ordered them to be reverentially entertained. In the cool shade was spread on mats an abundance of provisions, while fumes of burning incense consecrated the spot and made redolent the air. The governor of this province was present with two subordinate rulers, and learning what best the Spaniards loved, he sent out and gathered them gold trinkets to the value of fifteen thousand pesos. So valuable an acquisition impelled Grijalva to claim once more for Charles, one of the natives, subsequently christened Francisco, acting as interpreter. After a stay of six days the fleet sailed, passing a small island, white with sand, which Grijalva called Isla Blanca, and then the Isla Verde, gleaming green with foliage amidst the green waters, four leagues from the continent; coming presently to a third island, a league and a half from the mainland, which afforded good anchorage. This, according to Oviedo, was on the 18th of June. On landing the Spaniards found two stone temples, within which lay five human bodies, with bowels opened and limbs cut off; and all about were human heads on poles, while at the top of one of the edifices, ascended by stone steps, was the likeness of a lion in marble, with a hollow head, showing the tongue cut out, and opposite to it a stone idol and blood-fount. Here was evidently a sacrifice to some pagan deity; and touching it is to witness the horror with which these men of Spain regarded such shocking spectacles, while viewing complacently their own atrocious cruelties.
Crossing from Isla de Sacrificios, as they called this blood-bespattered place, the Spaniards landed on the adjoining mainland, and making for themselves shelter with boughs and sails began trading for gold; but the natives being timid and returns inconsiderable, Grijalva proceeded to another island, less than a league from the mainland and provided with water. Here was a harbor sheltered from the dread yet grateful north winds, which in winter rush in with passionate energy, driving away the dreadful summer vómito and tumbling huge surges on the strand, though now they formed but a wanton breeze by day, which slept on waves burnished by the radiant sun or silvered by the moon. Here they landed and erected huts upon the sand.[35] To the Spaniards all nature along this seaboard seemed dyed with the blood of human sacrifices. And here, beside evidences of heathen abominations in the forms of a great temple, idols, priests, and the bodies of two recently sacrificed boys, they had gnats and mosquitoes to annoy them, all which led them to consider the terror of their voyage and the advisability of return. Of the Indian, Francisco, Grijalva asked the significance of the detestable rite of ripping open living human bodies and offering bloody hearts to hungry gods; and the heathen answered, because the people of Culhua, or Ulua, as he pronounced the name, would have it so. From this circumstance, together with the facts that the name of the commander was Juan, and that it was now about the time of the anniversary of the feast of John the Baptist, the island was named San Juan de Ulua,[36] while the continent in that vicinity was called Santa María de las Nieves.
FOOTNOTES
[14] Solis and Herrera say 250; Gomara and Galvano, 200; Peter Martyr, 300, etc.
[15] Torquemada, i. 358, asserts that Montejo furnished his own vessel, and that Alonso Hernandez Puertocarrero, Alonso Dávila, Diego de Ordaz, and others, went at their own cost.
[16] As upon this point, that is to say, the orders and their fulfilment, turned the destiny, not only of Grijalva, but of the conquest, there has been much controversy over it. ‘Si Iuan de Grijalua supiera conocer aquella buena vẽtura, y poblara alli como los de su compañia le rogauan, fuera otro Cortes, mas no era para el tanto bien, ni lleuaua comission de poblar.’ Gomara, Hist. Ind., 57-8. Partisans of Cortés regard Grijalva with disdain, while no one seems greatly to care for Velazquez. Bernal Diaz was of opinion that the matter of founding a colony was left to Grijalva’s discretion; but Las Casas, who had much better opportunities for knowing, being intimate with the governor, and at special pains to ascertain the truth of the matter, states clearly that Grijalva’s instructions were positive, that he should not settle but only trade. ‘Bartolome de las Casas, autor de mucha fe, y que con particular cuydado lo quiso saber, y era gran amigo, y muy intimo de Diego Velazquez, dize que fue la instruccion que espressamente no poblasse, sino q̄ solamente rescatasse.’ Herrera, dec. ii. lib. iii. cap. i. So hold Torquemada, Solis, and all careful writers on the subject.
[17] Or as he calls himself, ‘capellano maggior’ of the armada. Long before the soldier, Bernal Diaz, published his ‘True History,’ Juan Diaz had given to the world an account of the voyage, Itinerario de la isola de Iuchatan, following the Itinerario de Ludovico de Varthema Bolognese nella Egitto, etc., in a volume printed at Venice in 1520. Juan Diaz disputes the honor with Bartolomé de Olmedo of having first said mass in the city of Mexico.
[18] Here again Prescott falls into error in attempting to follow a manuscript copy of Juan Diaz, without due heed to the standard chroniclers. Mr Prescott writes, Mex., i. 224, ‘The fleet left the port of St Jago de Cuba, May 1, 1518,’ and refers to the Itinerario of Juan Diaz in proof of his statement. But Juan Diaz makes no such statement. ‘Sabbato il primo giorno del mese de Marzo,’ he says, Itinerario, in Icazbalceta, Col. Doc., i. 281, ‘de questo sopradito anno parti il dicto capitaneo de larmata de lisola Fernandina.’ Saturday, the 1st day of May, the armada left the island of Fernandina, or Cuba. The writer does not intimate that they left the port of Santiago on that day, which, as a matter of fact, they did not, but the extreme western point of the island, Cape San Antonio. This Prescott might further have learned from Herrera, dec. ii. lib. iii. cap. i., ‘Despachado pues Iuan de Grijalua de todo punto, salio del puerto de Sãtiago de Cuba, a ocho de Abril deste año de 1518;’ from Bernal Diaz, Hist. Verdad., 6, who states that all met and attended mass at Matanzas, the 5th of April, just prior to sailing; ‘Y despues de auer oîdo Missa con gran deuocion, en cinco dias del mes de Abril de mil y quinientos y diez y ocho años dimos vela;’ from Solis, Conq. Mex., 25, ‘tardaron finalmente en hacerse á la mar hasta los ocho de Abril;’ from Robertson, Hist. Am., i. 241, ‘He sailed from St Jago de Cuba on the 8th of April,’ etc. Ternaux-Compans perpetrates two gross blunders in the first four lines of his translation of this Itinerario of Juan Diaz. First he writes March for May, ‘equivocando,’ as Icazbalceta says, ‘la palabra mazo del original con marzo.’ and, secondly, he brings the fleet to Cozumel Island on the 4th, when his author writes the 3d, which is enough, without the palpable absurdity of making Monday the 4th day of a month wherein the previous Saturday was the 1st. Oviedo states, i. 503, that ‘salieron del puerto de la cibdad de Sanctiago á los veynte é çinco dias del mes de enero;’ that they were at Matanzas the 12th of February, at Habana the 7th of April; that they left Matanzas finally the 20th of April, and San Antonio the 1st of May, in all which, except the last statement, he is somewhat confused.
[19] Like a good soldier, Bernal Diaz makes the time fit the occasion. ‘A este pueblo,’ he says, Hist. Verdad., 7, ‘pusimos por nombre Santa Cruz; porq̄ quatro, ò cinco diaz antes de Santa Cruz le vimos.’ The native name of the island was Acusamil—Landa, Rel. de Yuc., 20, writes it Cuzmil; Cogolludo, Hist. Yucathan, 10, Cuzamil—Swallow’s Island, which was finally corrupted into the Cozumel of the Spaniards. Mercator, indeed, writes Acusamil, in 1569, although Colon, Ribero, and Hood had previously given coçumel, cozumel, and Cosumel, respectively. Vaz Dourado comes out, in 1571, with quoqumell, since which time the name has been generally written as at present.
[20] Some of the authorities apply the name Santa Cruz to a port; others to a town found there; but it was unquestionably the island to which they gave this name. ‘A questa isola de Coçumel che ahora se adimanda Santa Croce.’ Diaz, Itinerario, in Icazbalceta, Col. Doc., i. 287. ‘Se le puso nombre á esta ĩsla Sancta Cruz, á la qual los indios llaman Coçumel.’ Oviedo, i. 504.