{*} [Las Casas was not residing in Cuba, as Prescott supposes, when Cortés sailed. The weight of authority seems to indicate that the departure of Cortés was hasty but not clandestine. Velasquez in his report to the Emperor does not say the Conqueror of Mexico stole away.—M.]
[518] Hist. de las Indias, MS., cap. 114.
[519] [Juan Sedeño was the richest man in the fleet. His possessions included a ship, a mare, a negro, and some cazabi bread and bacon. Bernal Diaz very properly gives a list of the horses belonging to the expedition, remarking that neither horses nor negroes could be had without great expense. (See Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 23.) A horse cost from four to five hundred pesos de oro.—M.]
[520] [Bancroft (Mexico, i. p. 66) thinks Prescott has made a slight mistake as to these ships, and that Sedeño was the commander of the second vessel. Bancroft also will have it that the standard of Cortés was made of “taffeta,” not velvet.—M.]
[521] Las Casas had this, also, from the lips of Cortés in later life. “Todo esto me dixo el mismo Cortés, con otras cosas cerca dello despues de Marques; ... reindo y mofando é con estas formales palabras, Á la mi fée andube por allí como un gentil cosario.” Hist. de las Indias, MS., cap. 115.
[522] De Rebus gestis, MS.—Gomara, Crónica, cap. 8.—Las Casas, Hist. de las Indias, MS., cap. 114, 115.
[523] [But not across the island. There was no need for Cortés to sail round the westerly point of Cuba with his squadron. Havana, or San Cristóbal de la Habana, was then upon the south side of the island. The town where the Havana of to-day stands was not founded until 1519. Many writers besides Prescott, knowing nothing of this fact, have fallen into this same error. From Trinidad to the new Habana would have been a long and difficult march for Alvarado and his party, and a long and unnecessary voyage for the fleet of Cortés.—M.]
[524] Bernal Diaz, Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 24.—De Rebus gestis, MS.—Gomara, Crónica, cap. 8.—Las Casas, Hist. de las Indias, MS., cap. 115.—The legend on the standard was, doubtless, suggested by that on the labarum,—the sacred banner of Constantine.
[525] The most minute notices of the person and habits of Cortés are to be gathered from the narrative of the old cavalier Bernal Diaz, who served so long under him, and from Gomara, the general’s chaplain. See in particular the last chapter of Gomara’s Crónica, and cap. 203 of the Hist. de la Conquista.
[526] Las Casas, Hist. de las Indias, MS., cap. 115.