Hernando Cortez

Оглавление

Abbott John Stevens Cabot. Hernando Cortez

PREFACE

Chapter I. The Discovery of Mexico

Chapter II. Early Life of Cortez

Chapter III. The Voyage to Mexico

Chapter IV. Founding a Colony

Chapter V. The Tlascalans Subjugated

Chapter VI. The March To Mexico

Chapter VII. The Metropolis Invaded

Chapter VIII. Battle of the Dismal Night

Chapter IX. The Capital Besieged and Captured

Chapter X. The Conquest Consummated

Chapter XI. The Expedition to Honduras

Chapter XII. The Last Days of Cortez

Отрывок из книги

Three hundred and fifty years ago the ocean which washes the shores of America was one vast and silent solitude. No ship plowed its waves; no sail whitened its surface. On the 11th of October, 1492, three small vessels might have been seen invading, for the first time, these hitherto unknown waters. They were as specks on the bosom of infinity. The sky above, the ocean beneath, gave no promise of any land. Three hundred adventurers were in these ships. Ten weeks had already passed since they saw the hills of the Old World sink beneath the horizon.

For weary days and weeks they had strained their eyes looking toward the west, hoping to see the mountains of the New World rising in the distance. The illustrious adventurer, Christopher Columbus, who guided these frail barks, inspired by science and by faith, doubted not that a world would ere long emerge before him from the apparently boundless waters. But the blue sky still overarched them, and the heaving ocean still extended in all directions its unbroken and interminable expanse.

.....

The code of Spanish law was in that day a bloody one. Spanish governors were almost unlimited despots. Cortez was not willing to go to Hispaniola with the cord of a convicted traitor about his neck. With extraordinary fortitude, he drew his feet, mangling them sadly, through the irons which shackled them. Creeping cautiously upon deck, he let himself down softly into the water, swam to the shore, and, half dead with pain and exhaustion, attained again the sanctuary of the church.

He now consented to marry the young lady with whose affections and reputation he had so cruelly trifled. The family, of course, espoused his cause. The governor, who was the lover of her sister, regarded this as the amende honorable, and again received the hot-blooded cavalier to his confidence. Thus this black and threatening cloud suddenly disappeared, and sunshine and calm succeeded the storm. Cortez returned to his estates with his bride a wiser, and perhaps a better man, from the severe discipline through which he had passed. Catalina Suarez, whom he married, was an amiable and beautiful lady of very estimable character. She eventually quite won the love of her wayward and fickle husband.

.....