tender melancholy that overspreads the face and tones to harmony whatever falls beneath its influence. Sweet and frank in her disposition, she is nevertheless resolute enough upon occasion; yet in her ordinary mood there is a rare grace and femininity, in which she is as liquid and pellucid as a passage in Herodotus. There is no shame in her blush, nothing bordering on conscious inferiority in her bearing; nothing that these or any other beings may do unto her can lessen her self-respect. She scarcely knows she is a slave, the plaything of passion; she finds the world made so, men the stronger and wickeder, and she has but to acquiesce.[1]
Cortés is deeply interested. As if from heaven some bright being had been sent to his assistance, so comes to him Marina now. What is her history? Strangely romantic. She is the daughter of a cacique, born at Painala, eight leagues from Goazacoalco. While yet a child her father died; and upon a son, the fruit of a second marriage, the mother centred all her affections. To secure to him the succession and inheritance which rightly belonged to the daughter, Marina was given as a slave to some travelling merchants of Xicalanco, while a slave girl who had just died was passed off for Marina and buried with the usual stately ceremonies.[2] Arrived at Tabasco, Marina
- ↑ 'Entremetida, é desembuelta,' slabbers that lecherous old soldier Bernal Diaz. To call women loose comes well from men who spend their lives in making them so. If, as has been stated, the women of her native district have borne a reputation not altogether enviable, whose fault is it? Not theirs, truly. That this girl was the mistress of men, under the circumstances, detracts not one iota from her good name in the minds of right-thinking persons; nay, it detracts nothing from her purity of mind, her honesty, or her innate morality. 'Reprehensible medio de asegurarla en su fidelidad,' says Solis, Hist. Conq. Mex., i. 119, otherwise so ready to cover up the defects of his hero.
- ↑ Bernal Diaz, Hist. Verdad., 24-5. According to Gomara she was born in Viluta, in the direction of Jalisco, the daughter of rich parents, related to the cacique. From them she was stolen by traders and sold in Xicalanco. Hist. Mex., 40. The town and district may be a corruption of Huilotlan, in Xalatzinco, which Ixtlilxochitl, Hist. Chich, 287, gives as her native place, and this may be identical with the present Oluta or Holuta, near Acayucan, on the isthmus of Tehuantepec. Painala is no longer known. Fossey, who travelled through the region, states that tradition makes Xaltipan or Altipan her birthplace, and in support of this belief a mountain is pointed out, close to the
