ns. With dying hand he inscribes the following
remarkable lines:

"It has long been a question whether one can conscientiously
hold property in Indian slaves. Since this point has not yet
been determined, I enjoin it on my son Martin and his heirs
that they spare no pains to come to an exact knowledge of
the truth, as a matter which concerns the conscience of each
one of them no less than mine."

As the noise of the city disturbed the dying man, he was removed to
the neighboring village of Castilleja. His son, then but fifteen years
of age, watched over his venerated father, and nursed him with filial
affection. On the second day of December, fifteen hundred and
forty-seven, Cortez died, in the sixty-third year of his age. He was
buried with great pomp in the tomb of the Duke of Medina Sidonia at
Seville. A vast concourse of the inhabitants of the whole surrounding
country attended his funeral. Five years after his death, in
1562, his son Martin removed his remains to Mexico, and deposited
them, not at Cojuhacan, as Cortez had requested, but in a family vault
in the monastery at Tezcuco. Here the remains of Cortez reposed for
sixty-seven years. In 1629 the Mexican authorities decided to transfer
them to Mexico, to be deposited beneath the church of St. Francis. The
occasion was celebrated with all the accompaniments of religious and
military pomp. The bells tolled the funeral knell, and from muffled
drums and martial bands sublime requiems floated forth over the still
waters of the lake, as the mortal remains of Cortez were borne over
the long causeway, where he had displayed such superhuman energy
during the horrors of the _dismal night_.

Here the ashes of Cortez reposed undisturbed for one hundred and
sixty-five years, when the mouldering relics were again removed in
1794, and were more conspicuously enshrined in the Hospital of Our
Lady of the Conception, which Cortez had founded and endowed. A
crystal coffin, secured with bars of iron, inclosed the relics, over
which a costly and beautiful monument was reared.

THE END.

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:

1. Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters' errors, and to
ensure consistent spelling and punctuation in this e-text; otherwise,
every effort has been made to remain true to the original book.

2. The chapter summaries in this text were originally published as
banners in the page headers, and hav