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.
