The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Diaz
del Castillo, Vol 1 (of 2), by Bernal Diaz del Castillo

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Title: The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Vol 1 (of 2)
Written by Himself Containing a True and Full Account of
the Discovery and Conquest of Mexico and New Spain.

Author: Bernal Diaz del Castillo

Translator: John Ingram Lockhart

Release Date: May 21, 2010 [EBook #32474]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE MEMOIRS
OF THE
CONQUISTADOR BERNAL DIAZ DEL CASTILLO

WRITTEN BY HIMSELF

CONTAINING A TRUE AND FULL ACCOUNT
OF THE
DISCOVERY AND CONQUEST
OF
MEXICO AND NEW SPAIN

TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL SPANISH BY
JOHN INGRAM LOCKHART, F.R.A.S.
AUTHOR OF "ATTICA AND ATHENS"

IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I

LONDON
J. HATCHARD AND SON, 187, PICCADILLY
MDCCCXLIV.

C. AND J. ADLARD, PRINTERS, BATHOLOMEW CLOSE.

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

The History of the Conquest of New Spain is a subject in which great
interest is felt at the present day, and the English public will hail
these memoirs, which contain the only true and complete account of that
important transaction.

The author of this original and charming production, to which he justly
gives the title of 'The True History of the Conquest of New Spain,' was
himself one of the Conquistadores; one who not only witnessed the
transactions which he relates, but who also performed a glorious part in
them; a soldier who, for impartiality and veracity, perhaps never had
his equal. His account is acknowledged to be the only one on which we
can place reliance, and it has been the magazine from which the most
eloquent of the Spanish writers on the same subject, as well as those of
other countries, have borrowed their best materials. Some historians
have even transcribed whole pages, but have not had sufficient honesty
to a