Days of the Discoverers

by Louise Lamprey

"I knew it," said Saavedra to himself as he went back, alone, to his quarters. "Just as people have made up their minds they have got him between the door and the jamb, he is somewhere else. When he resigned his commission he slipped out from under the government of Cuba, and that has no authority over him. He has appointed a council made up of his own friends, and now he can hang every one of the Velasquez party if they make any trouble. But they won't."

They did not. Cortes sent his flagship to Spain with some of his especial friends and some of his particular enemies on board, the enemies to get them out of his way, the friends to defend him to the King against their accusations. He founded a city which he named Villa Rica de Vera Cruz, the Rich Town of the True Cross. Then, as the next step toward the invasion of the country, he proceeded to play Indian politics.

First he accepted the invitation of the chief of the Totonacs, and Moteczuma, hearing of it, sent the tax-gatherers to collect tribute and also to demand twenty young men and women to sacrifice to the gods as an atonement for having entertained the strangers. Cortes expressed lively horror, and advised the chief of the Totonacs to throw the tax-gatherers into prison. Then he secretly rescued them and telling them how deeply he regretted their misfortunes as innocent men doing their duty to their ruler, he sent them on board his own ships for safe-keeping. When the Emperor heard what had happened he was enraged against the Totonacs. If they wished to escape his vengeance now their only chance was to become allies of Cortes.

Thus within a few days after landing, the commander had got all of his own followers and a powerful native tribe so bound up with his fortunes that they could not desert him without endangering their own skins. He now suggested to two of the pilots that they should report five of the ships to be in an unseaworthy condition from the borings of the teredos—in those days sheathing for hulls had not been invented, and the ship-worm was a constant danger, in tropical waters especially. At the pilots' report Cortes appeared astonished, but saying that there was nothing to do but make the best of it, ordered the ships to be dismantled, the cordage, sails and everything that could be of use brought on shore, and the stripped hulls scuttled and sunk. Then four more were condemned, leaving but one small ship.

There was nearly a riot in the army, marooned in an unknown and unfriendly land. Cortes made another speech. He pointed out the fact that if they were successful in the expedition to the capital they would not need the ships; if they were not, what good would the ships do them when they were seventy leagues inland? Those who dared not take the risk with him could still return to Cuba in the one ship that was left. "They can tell there," he added in a tone which cut the deeper for being so very quiet, "how they deserted their commander and their friends, and patiently wait until we return with the spoils of the Aztecs."

An instant of breathless silence followed, then somebody shouted. A hundred voices took up the cry,—

"To Mexico! To Mexico!"

Of the adventures, the fighting, the wonderful sights and the narrow escapes of the march to the capital, Bernal Diaz, who was with the army, wrote afterward in bulky volumes. On the seventh day of November, 1519, the compact little force of Spaniards, little more than a battalion in all, with their Indian allies from the provinces which had rebelled against the Emperor, came in sight of the capital. The moment at which Cortes, at the head of his followers, rode into the city of Mexico is one of the most dramatic in all history. Nothing in any novel of adventure compares with it in amazing contrast or tragic possibilities. The men of the Age of Cannon met the men of the Age of Stone. The mighty Catholic Church confronted a nation of snake-worshiping cannibals. The sons of a race that lived in hardy simplicity, a race of fighters, had come into a capital where life was more luxurious than it was in Seville, Paris or Rome—a heathen capital rich in beauty, wealth and all the arts of a barbarian people.

The city had been built on an island in the middle of a salt lake, reached by three causeways of masonry four or five miles long and twenty or thirty feet wide. At the end near the city each causeway had a wooden drawbridge. There were paved streets and water-ways. The houses, built around large court-yards, were of red stone, sometimes covered with white stucco. The roofs were encircled with battlements and defended with towers. Often they were gardens of growing flowers. In the center of the city was the temple enclosure, surrounded by an eight-foot stone wall. Within this were a score of teocallis, or pyramids flattened at the top, the largest, that of the war-god, being about a hundred feet high. Stone stairs wound four times around the pyramid, so that religious processions appeared and disappeared on their way to the top. On the summit was a block of jasper, rounded at top, the altar of human sacrifice. Near by were the shrines and altars of the gods. Outside the temple enclosure was a huge altar, or embankment, called the tzompantli, one hundred and fifty-four feet long, upon which the skulls of innumerable victims were arranged. The doorways and walls everywhere were carved with the two symbols of the Aztec religion—the cross and the snake. Among the birds in the huge aviary of the royal establishment were the humming-birds which were sacred to one of the most cruel of the gods, and in cages built for them were the rattlesnakes also held sacred. Flowers were everywhere—in garlands hung about the city, in the hands of the people, on floating islands in the water, in the gardens blazing with color.

The Spanish strangers were housed in a great stone palace and entertained no less magnificently than the gifts of the Emperor had led them to expect. The houses were ceiled with cedar and tapestried with fine cotton or feather work. Moteczuma's table service was of gold and silver and fine earthenware. The people wore cotton garments, often dyed vivid scarlet with cochineal, the men wearing loose cloaks and fringed sashes, the women, long robes. Fur capes and feather-work mantles and tunics were worn in cold weather; sandals and white cotton hoods protected feet and head. The women sometime used a deep violet hair-dye. Ear-rings, nose-rings, finger-rings, bracelets, anklets and necklaces were of gold and silver.