Here was
an authentic account of a vast nation, potent and populous, exhibiting
an elaborate social polity, well advanced in the arts of civilisation,
occupying a soil that teemed with mineral treasures and with a
boundless variety of vegetable products, stores of wealth, both
natural and artificial, that seemed, for the first time, to realise
the golden dreams in which the great discoverer of the New World had
so fondly, and in his own day so fallaciously, indulged. Well might
the scholar of that age exult in the revelation of these wonders,
which so many had long, but in vain, desired to see.
With this letter went another to the emperor, signed, as it
would seem, by nearly every officer and soldier in the camp. It
expatiated on the obstacles thrown in the way of the expedition by
Velasquez and Narvaez, and the great prejudice this had caused to
the royal interests. It then set forth the services of Cortes, and
besought the emperor to confirm him in his authority, and not to allow
any interference with one who, from his personal character, his
intimate knowledge of the land and its people, and the attachment of
his soldiers, was the man best qualified in all the world to achieve
the conquest of the country.
It added not a little to the perplexities of Cortes, that he was
still in entire ignorance of the light in which his conduct was
regarded in Spain. He had not even heard whether his despatches,
sent the year preceding from Vera Cruz, had been received.
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