Mississippi by De Soto, of Florida by Ponce de Leon, and of the
whole course of {438} the Amazon by Orellana who sailed down it from
Peru, or in reading of Balboa, "when with eagle eyes he stared at the
Pacific." A resolute man could hardly set out exploring without
stumbling upon some mighty river, some vast continent, or some
unmeasured ocean. But among all these fairly-tales [Transcriber's
note: fairy-tales?] there are some that are so marvellous that they
would be thought too extravagant by the most daring writers of romance.
That one captain with four hundred men, and another with two hundred,
should each march against an extensive and populous empire, cut down
their armies at odds of a hundred to one, put their kings to the sword
and their temples to the torch, and after it all reap a harvest of gold
and precious stones such as for quantity had never been heard of
before--all this meets us not in the tales of Ariosto or of Dumas, but
in the pages of authentic history.

[Conquest of Mexico]

In the tableland of Mexico dwelt the Aztecs, the most civilized and
warlike of North American aborigines. Their polity was that of a
Spartan military despotism, their religion the most grewsome known to
man. Before their temples were piled pyramids of human skulls; the
deities were placated by human sacrifice, and at times, according to
the deicidal and theophagous rites common to many primitive
superstitions, themselves sacrificed in effigy or in the person of a
beautiful captive and their flesh eaten in sacramental cannibalism.
Though the civilization of the Aztecs, derived from the earlier and
perhaps more advanced Mayans, was scarcely so high as that of the
ancient Egyptians, they had cultivated the arts sufficiently to work
the mines of gold and silver and to hammer the precious metals into
elaborate and massive ornaments.

When rumors of their wealth reached Cuba it seemed at last as if the
dream of El Dorado had come true. Hernando Cortez, a cultured,
resolute, brave and {439} politic leader, gathered a force of four
hundred white men, with a small outfit of artillery and cavalry, and,
on Good Friday, 1519, landed at the place now called Vera Cruz and
marched on the capital. The race of warriors who delighted in nothing
but slaughter, was stupefied, partly by an old prophecy of the coming
of a god to subdue the land, partly by the strange and terrible arms of
the invaders. Moreover their neighbors and subjects