women are unable to moderate their grief for the loss of
those they have loved, she said she was tired of life, and longed to
quit this vale of sorrows. I have merely mentioned this circumstance
because Gomara, in his Chronicles, puts the following blasphemous words
into her mouth: "That the Lord Jesus could not have visited her with a
severer calamity;" and he maintains that it was owing to her having
given utterance to this that the town of Guatimala was shortly after
visited by so direful a calamity; for the volcano, which lies about two
miles from the town, during a violent storm, suddenly vomited huge
masses of stone and clouds of ashes, succeeded by a deluge of water,
from the bursting of the crater, by which a great part of the town where
the widow of Alvarado resided was totally destroyed, and she herself,
with several of her ladies, drowned. However, this lady certainly gave
utterance to nothing more than what I have mentioned above, and what
Gomara states is an invention of his own: and if it pleased the Lord
Jesus to call her away from this earth, it is not for mortal man to
scrutinise the mysterious decrees of heaven.

With respect to this dreadful tempest and earthquake, I will give the
particulars in another place. I cannot help mentioning with regret,
that, notwithstanding the many important services which Alvarado and his
five brothers, as also the other Alvarados, had rendered to the crown,
the sons and daughters of the first-mentioned retained none of the
townships comprehended in his commendary, and that the fact of his
having subdued the whole province was never even taken into
consideration, and it was no longer borne in mind that he accompanied
the expedition under Grijalva, and was present in all the campaigns of
Cortes. The manner in which he himself, his wife, his children, and his
brothers lost their lives, is altogether remarkable. Alvarado himself,
as we have seen, met with his death in the expedition against Cochitlan;
his brother Jorge, who fought in some of the campaigns of Mexico and
those of Guatimala, died in Madrid in the year 1540, whither he had gone
to solicit his majesty for some remuneration for the services he had
rendered the crown; Gomez was killed in Peru; Gonzalo died in Guaxaca or
Mexico; and Juan, who was a natural brother, ended his life at Cuba,
whither he had journeyed to look over some property he possessed in this
island. The eldest of Alvarado's sons, named Don Pedro,