by fitting costume, and wore ornaments, which were usually more remarkable for their richness and value than their show.

His armament consisted of eleven ships, under as many captains. On the 10th February, 1519, he reviewed his forces at Cape St. Antonio. "They amounted to one hundred and ten mariners, five hundred and fifty-three soldiers, including thirty-two cross-bowmen, and thirteen arquebusiers, besides two hundred Indians of the island, and a few Indian women for menial offices. He was provided with ten heavy guns, four lighter pieces called falconets, and a good supply of ammunition. He had besides sixteen horses.” With this force did this great man enter upon the conquest of the magnificent, the strong, the warlike and numerous people of Tenochtitlan, and the contiguous nations. His review was closed with a speech, almost the only speech on record, of a great warrior, the promises of which were amply verified by the result. He told them, just as if he had himself beheld it all, of the extent, the danger, the glory of the enterprize in which they were about to engage. He was about to lead them, he said, to countries more vast and opulent than any they had known, and the conquest of which must make them famous to all succeeding ages. "But," said he, "these are to be won only by incessant toil. Great things are achieved only by great exertions. Glory was never the reward of sloth. If I have laboured hard and staked my all in this undertaking, it is for that renown which is the noblest recompense of man. But, if any among you court riches more, be but true to me, as I will be to you and to the occasion, and I will make you masters of more than Spain has ever dreamed of. You are few in number, but strong in resolution. If this does not falter, doubt not that God, who has never failed the Spaniard in his battle with the infidel, will shield you, though encompassed by a cloud of enemies. Your cause is just you fight under the banner of the Cross. On, then, with alacrity and confidence, and carry to a glorious issue the work so auspiciously begun."

At Cozumel, Cortés soon proved to his soldiers, that, while he disdained to follow in the steps of other cavaliers, so also did he reject many of their practices. One of his captains, arriving at the island first, displayed the red hand to the natives, drove them from their homes, and despoiled their temples. Cortés rebuked his follower, restored the

spoils, and succeeded in recalling the Indians to their homes, and converting them, after the fashion of the time, to the faith of Christ. Their uncouth idols, tumbled from their teocallis, made way for the Virgin and the Child. Here, Cortés was fortunate in recovering a Spaniard who had been captured by the Indians in a previous expedition, who had acquired the Maya language, and was thus of great importance to the intercourse carried on with the natives of Yucatan. He had been eight years in captivity. Cortés proceeded from Cozumel, by water, to Campeachy, in the neighborhood of which he found one of his ships which had been missing. He then proceeded to the river Tabasco, which had been penetrated by Grijalva, one of his predecessors. This river he ascended with a considerable force in boats and brigantines, until he discovered a town, built of bricks, and surrounded by a wall of timber, through loopholes in which it could be defended by missiles. Failing, after entreaty, to procure the supplies of water and provisions which he required, and defied by the savages, he dispersed his troops in several divisions and succeeded in storming the place, which was gallantly defended. The savages fought with equal skill and bravery, and, singling out Cortés, who particularly distinguished himself in the conflict, they addressed themselves with special ferocity to his destruction. "Strike at the chief," was their cry-which drew upon him attentions equally honorable and dangerous. He lost his sandals in the struggle, and fought barefoot in the mud. A second battle followed in the plains of Ceutla. The Indians marshalled their legions,-legions indeed,-stretching out in dusk array to the very edge of the horizon. The fight which followed was a terrible one, but, in the most trying moment of the encounter, the eye of faith, among the more superstitious Spaniards, discovered a sacred ally from heaven, fighting in their ranks,-no other than the blessed St. James, the patron saint of Spain,—who, mounted on a grey horse, conducted to the shame of all other captains, to the final overthrow of the infidel. As far as we can see, Cortés himself wrought as effectually to this consummation, as the blessed saint whose business it does not seem to have been. He contented himself with victory, and forbore unnecessary slaughter. His mercy had its effect, not less than his valor. The savages felt their inferiority to the strange invader. Their chiefs sent in their submission, and appeared with the

usual tribute of gold, slaves, and garments of feathers and cotton. Among the female slaves thus tendered, was one, the possession of whom, by the Spaniards, was soon ascribed to the particular interposition of heaven. She proved to be a native Mexican, taken by the Yucatanese when young, who still preserved her own language, and was capable of translating for the conqueror, where his recovered Spaniard failed, namely, when they came in contact with those who spoke the Aztec dialect. She was baptized at Tabasco, and took the name of Marina. The Spaniards afterwards called her Dona Marina, and the Mexicans Malinche. We are compelled to state, moreover, that she soon attained a closer personal relationship to the captain-general than good morals will justify. The amorous nature of our hero, was not more subdued by trade and agriculture than his military ambition. Marina was beautiful and attractive of person. Her temper is described as generous and gentle. She was equally faithful to the chief and useful to the expedition. She had a quick mind, and soon acquired the Castilian. Love may have helped greatly to facilitate the study of the language. The Spaniards held her name in high veneration. She bore a son to Cortés, of whom the historian remarks, that he was "less distinguished by his birth than his unmerited persecutions."

From the conquered people of Tabasco, Cortés received his first intimations of that great empire which he was des tined to conquer. His yearning spirit suffered no delay. A day of solemn festivity was spent among the conquered savages, to whom he gave the rites of the Catholic faith. The breeze favored, and re-embarking, he held his way along the coast until he reached the island of San Juan de Ulloa; and here the Aztec dialect succeeded to that of the Mayan, and Dona Marina as interpreter, to Aguilar. Here, something more was learned of Mexico, and of Montezuma, its potent sovereign. Cortés was pleased with the country, and landed on the very spot which is occupied by the modern city of Vera Cruz. Here he founded a settlement, and opened an intercourse with the natives. To the chief of these he declared his purpose of meeting their monarch,-a resolution which provoked the scorn of the savage, who had no notion that the world could contain a prince so powerful as his Of the Aztec civilization at this period, Mr. Prescott has given us an elaborate and interesting picture, to which

own.

we commend the reader. It would too greatly expand our article, were we to attempt to say any thing on this subject, or on the kindred topic which involves the history of those wondrous ruins of civilization, which make conspicuous and curious the whole face of the adjoining country. Enough for us that Mexico was, in one sense, the mistress of the neighboring nations. Montezuma was a sovereign of considerable ability and acknowledged bravery. But his reign was troubled. Cortés arrived at a happy juncture. The internal condition of Mexico, was not one of repose. The elements of discord were at work. She was surrounded by enemies, who hated as they feared her power; and discontents within the kingdom, were the natural consequence of a condition of unexampled prosperity,-of an iron-browed despotism, and of nobles, haughty and aspiring, who possessed equal motives and facilities for revolt. The success of the Spaniards was necessarily facilitated by these influences, and the superstitions of the Mexican monarch were of a kind particularly to favor the progress of the invader. Venerable predictions taught him to fear the presence of a white and bearded people, and numerous omens accruing at the period of their arrival on the coast, quickened the apprehensions of a monarch, whose nature seems to have been morbidly alive to such influences. How he strove,-by what arts, falsehoods and open violence,-to retard the approach of the Spaniards to his capital, must be sought in the elaborate histories before us. But the resolution of Cortés was no less fixed in the attainment of that object. He pressed forward with a will as absolute as that of fate, and the Aztec monarch, beholding in him the very fate that he feared, ceased, of a sudden, to exercise those qualities of courage, prudence and decision, by which he had made himself feared of other foes, and by which the present might have been baffled. We see him yielding, hour by hour, and step by step, to the progress of a power, the very glance of which seems to have paralyzed all his own, as that of the serpent is said to paralyze the faculties of the trembling song-bird, upon whom he fastens the fascinating terrors of his eye. Great were the mistakes which he made in his futile endeavors to arrest the approach of the Spaniards. The very presents, by which he revealed the wealth of his kingdom, furnished an irresistible impulse to the object, which they were meant to divert and to dissuade. His expressed wish

that the invaders would not advance, betrayed his terrors; and his terrors, seen not less by the surrounding natives, than by the Spaniards, while they encouraged the revolt of the one, stimulated the audacity of the other. The reader has a sufficient idea of the splendor of the presents sent by Montezuma to Cortés; the survey of which did not lessen the resolution of the latter, to see the other in person, and express his acknowledgments. Other gifts followed, with a renewal of the refusal of the Aztec monarch to suffer the Spaniards to penetrate his empire. But the very terms of the refusal betrayed his timidity, and it was unavailing with the invader. As well might the puny fawn in the jaws of the Carcajou, deny that he should finish the repast, the flavor of which is already on his palate.

While Cortés hesitated to advance, rather in consequence of some discontents among his troops than because of any doubts or apprehensions of his own, he became aware. by certain ambassadors from the Totonacs, of the domestic relation of Mexico with the surrounding nations. Taught that the conquered and ill-used people who had been brought by force of arms beneath the rule of Montezuma, were prepared to avail themselves of the first opportunity for throwing off the yoke, he at once grasped the grand idea of using them against their conquerors, of fighting the one people against the other, and thus economizing, for final issues, the strength and valor of his own. Ingeniously suppressing the discontents in his camp, occasioned by the fears of some, and, in part, by the machinations of certain friends of Velasquez, he founded a City, to which was given the name of Villa Rica de Vera Cruz. A magistracy was set over it. To this magistracy he surrendered the powers obtained from the Governor of Cuba, and received from them, in return, in the name of the sovereign, a similar authority. The more violent of the friends of Velasquez were put in irons, and sent on ship-board, where they soon learned to moderate their hostility, and join with their comrades in the common cause. It was no hollow peace. The wonderful address of Cortés, secured their affections, and they were ever afterwards faithful to his fortunes.

We hurry over, as unnecessary to our narrative, the minor events which followed. He passed into the territories of the Totonacs, estimated to contain a hundred thousand warriors, with the Cacique of whom, he formed an alliance, and from