in part, a
descendant of the ancient race."

With the following tributes to the great captain the story of his
amazing adventures is ended. Says Helps:

"He was the mighty conqueror of one of the most compact and
well-ordered barbaric nations of the world--a conqueror who, with a few
hundreds of his fellow-countrymen, not all of them his partisans,
overcame hundreds of thousands of fanatic and resolute men fighting
against him with immense resources, and with a resolution nearly equal
to his own. Let us give him the benefit of his sincere belief in
Christianity, and his determination to substitute that beneficent
religion for the hideous and cruel superstition of the people he was
resolved to conquer. And let us echo the wish of that good common
soldier, Bernal Diaz, who, though having his grievances against Cortes,
as all of the other _Conquistadores_ thought they had, could yet, after
watching every turn in the fortunes of the great Marquis, and knowing
almost every sin {225} that he had committed, write most tenderly of
the great captain whose plume he had so often followed to victory.

"After saying that, subsequently to the conquest of Mexico, Cortes had
not had good fortune either in his Californian or his Honduras
expedition, or indeed in anything else he had undertaken, Bernal Diaz
adds, 'Perhaps it was that he might have felicity in heaven. And I
believe it was so, for he was an honorable cavalier, and a devoted
worshipper of the Virgin, the Apostle St. Peter and other Saints. May
God pardon his sins, and mine too, and give me a righteous ending,
which things are of more concern than the conquests and victories that
we had over the Indians.'"

Writes MacNutt:

"His sagacity, his foresight, and his moderation have caused critical
historians to rank him higher as a statesman than as a soldier. In
virtue of his pre-eminent qualities both as a statesman and as a
general, as well as because of the enduring importance of his conquest,
Fernando Cortes occupies an uncontested place amongst the heroes of the
nations."

However we may sympathize with the Aztecs, we cannot escape from the
fact that it was much better that there should be a Spanish rule
instead of an Aztec rule in Mexico, and that the civilization of the
former should supplant the so-called civilization of the latter. That
does not prevent us from wishing that the supersession might not have
been so harsh and ruthless, but in view of the ti