The Aztecs were frightened when they saw the thousand soldiers Cortes now brought up against them, for it looked as if the new troops had come down from the skies to the help of the Spaniards. When the battle was fiercest, the broken-spirited emperor went out to plead with the natives to stop their fighting. This made them so angry that they hurled stones at him and he died of a broken heart. The hatred of his own people was even harder to bear than Spanish cruelty.
After more fierce fighting, Cortes completed the conquest of Mexico. Years afterward he returned to his old home in Spain, where he was, for a time, treated as a great conqueror. But he suffered in later years from remorse for his treachery and cruelty. When he grew old he was imprisoned through the influence of Spanish enemies.
One day an old, broken man with shaggy gray locks pushed through the crowd around King Charles of Spain, now known as Emperor Charles the Fifth and the most powerful monarch in the world. When the emperor asked the old man who he was, he replied with indignant pride,
“I am Cortes, the man who has given you more provinces than your ancestors left you cities.”
DE SOTO, A GOLD HUNTER IN SOUTHERN SWAMPS
HERNANDO DE SOTO was the Spanish grandee, or noble, appointed governor of Cuba and “the Floridas” about twenty-five years after Florida was discovered. It was Ponce de Leon who landed near the southern point of North America, on Easter Day, 1513, and named that lovely country Florida—Land of Flowers. De Leon had heard a beautiful story that far inland in the heart of the wilderness there was a magic spring that would make young forever all who drank of its sparkling waters. Though he searched long and eagerly, Ponce de Leon discovered no Fountain of Eternal Youth, but he did find endless swamps full of snakes and alligators.
De Soto, the new governor of Florida, made up his mind that Ponce de Leon was a very foolish old man. He ought to have known that there are no such things nowadays as springs of eternal youth. He, Hernando de Soto, was going to show his practical good sense by finding solid, yellow gold—for what good is youth without money to enjoy it with? De Soto was already a very rich man, for he had served under Pizarro, the cruel conqueror of Peru, and he had gone home to Spain one of the wealthiest of its grandees, in those days of wonderful discoveries and marvelous fortunes. Still Hernando de Soto was not satisfied. He wanted to be like Pizarro or Cortes—to conquer a great country and capture from its dusky people gold mines and vast wealth.
Therefore on a bright July day he left Cuba in charge of a high official and sailed away. He and his knights in armor stood on the decks of their nine ships, large and small, and waved farewells to the fair ladies who stood on the castle tower at Havana weeping bitterly, fearing that they would never see their brave lords and knights again.
Governor de Soto and his fleet came to anchor in the harbor now known as Tampa Bay. During the night they were aroused by horrible yells and showers of arrows from the shore. In the morning the Spaniards made a landing, though the natives fought hard to keep them back. Before night they met a man who could be of great use to them. He was a member of a party that, after De Leon’s discovery, had gone to Florida to find gold, but had been driven back. This young man, Juan Ortiz, had been captured and kept by the Indians as a slave. A member of De Soto’s scouting party tells how they met this poor fellow:
“Towards sunset it pleased God that the soldiers descried at a distance some twenty Indians painted with a kind of red ointment that they put on when they go to war. They wore many feathers and had their bows and arrows. And when the Christians ran at them, the Indians fled to a hill, and one of them came forth into the path, lifting up his voice and saying in Spanish,