sumed the wealth and the people of the islands,—and all this on pretence of planting the Cross! It was the cool speculation of a daring robber, hardened by a false faith, and by witnessing deeds of blood and outrage, to a total insensibility to every feeling but the diseased overgrowth of selfish ambition.
The attempt to subdue a kingdom stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean in a breadth of above five hundred leagues from east to west, and of upwards of two hundred from north to south—a kingdom populous, fertile, and of a warlike reputation; and that with a force of not seven hundred men, appears at first view an act of madness: but Cortez was too well acquainted with American warfare to know that it was not impracticable. In the first place, he knew that the weapons of the natives had very little effect upon the quilted cotton dress which the Spaniards adopted on these expeditions, and that by the terror of their fire-arms and their union of movement, they could in almost all cases and situations keep them at that distance which took away even that little effect, while it left them open to the full play of the European missives. He knew the terror that the natives had of the Spanish horses, dogs, and artillery; and moreover he had speedily discovered, through the means of one of the women slaves brought from Darien who proved to be a Mexican by birth, that Mexico was a kingdom newly cemented by the arms of Montezuma and his immediate predecessors, and therefore full of provinces still smarting under the sense of their subjugation, and ready to seize on an occasion of revenge. In fact, he had speedily practical evidence of this, for the cazique of Chempoalla, a neighbouring
