[1060] There is much conflict of testimony on the respective share of Cortés and Velasquez in equipping the expedition. H. H. Bancroft (Mexico, i. 57) collates the authorities.
[1061] Prescott makes Cortés sail clandestinely; Bancroft makes his departure a hurried but open one; and this is Helps’s view of the authorities.
[1062] The authorities are not in unison about all these figures. Cf. H. H. Bancroft, Mexico, i. 70.
[1063] See the long note comparing some of these accounts in H. H. Bancroft’s Mexico, i. 102, etc.
[1064] Marina did more. She impressed Cortés, who found her otherwise convenient for a few years; and after she had borne him children, married her to one of his captains. What purports to be a likeness of her is given in Cabajal’s México, ii. 64.
[1065] Prescott (Mexico, revised edition, i. 345) points out how this site was abandoned later for one farther south, where the town was called Vera Cruz Vieja; and again, early in the seventeenth century, the name and town were transferred to another point still farther south,—Nueva Vera Cruz. These changes have caused some confusion in the maps of Lorenzana and others. Cf. the maps in Prescott and H. H. Bancroft.
[1066] There is some discrepancy in the authorities here as regards the openness or stealth of the act of destroying the fleet. See the authorities collated in Prescott, Mexico, new edition, i. 369, 370.
[1067] The estimates of numbers in all the operations throughout the Conquest differ widely, sometimes very widely, according to different authorities. The student will find much of the collation of these opposing statements done for him in the notes of Prescott and Bancroft.
[1068] Fac-simile of an engraving on copper in the edition of Solis printed at Venice in 1715, p. 29. It is inscribed: “Cavato da vn originale fatto iñazi chei si portassi alla Conqvista del Messico.”
[1069] Fac-simile of the copper plate in the Venice edition of Solis Conquista (1715) inscribed “Cavato dall’originale venvto dal Messico al Sermo G. D. di Toscana.”