CHAPTER I. IMPORTANCE OF THE HISTORY OF GUATEMALAEMBASSIES TO CORTES AFTER THE SIEGE OF MEXICO-HIS DISCOVERY OF THE SEA OF THE SOUTH-ORIGIN OF THE KINGDOM OF GUATEMALA-LAWS AND CUSTOMS OF THAT COUNTRYEXPEDITION AGAINST GUATEMALA PREPARED. CHAPTER II. CONQUEST OF GUATEMALA BY PEDRO DE ALVARADO —FOUNDING OF THE TOWN OF GUATEMALA. ESTABLISHMENT OF THE TOWN OF SANTIAGO IN GUATEMALA-DOMINGO DE BETANZOS COMES TO WITH THE GOVERNOR-COMES TO GUATEMALA CHAPTER VI. LAS CASAS AND HIS MONKS OFFER TO CONQUER "THE LAND OF WAR" THEY MAKE THEIR PREPARATIONS FOR THE ENTERPRIZE. CHAPTER VII. LAS CASAS SUCCEEDS IN SUBDUING AND CONVERTING BY PEACEABLE MEANS "THE LAND OF WAR" HE IS SENT TO SPAIN AND DETAINED THERE. CHAPTER IX. TRIUMPH OF THE DOMINICANS IN GUATEMALA— THE LAND OF WAR" IS CALLED THE LAND OF PEACE"-THE FINAL LABOURS AND DEATH CHAPTER I. IMPORTANCE OF THE HISTORY OF GUATEMALA EMBASSIES TO CORTES AFTER THE SIEGE T must often have been felt that the narra- B. XV. IT tive of the Spanish Conquest, whether told in Ch. 1. strict order of time, or made to conform itself to place, was inconveniently scattered; and that it is occasionally difficult to maintain a clear view of the main drift and current of the story. Now, however, as in the closing act of a wellconstructed drama, the principal events make themselves felt; the principal personages reappear together on the scene; and the threads of many persons' fortunes are found to lead up to some unity in time and place. This felicitous conjunction does not often happen in real life; but, at the particular point of the narrative which we have now to consider, something of the kind undoubtedly did occur. In the decade of years that followed after the conquest of Mexico, the spot where some of the most important conquests were completed and the greatest expeditions prepared, where the strangest experiments were made for the conversion of the natives, where the |