hography of the Mexican names of persons, places, and things, and to
illustrate or correct circumstances and accounts of events, wherever that
seemed necessary. Diaz commences his work with his own embarkation from
Spain in 1514, and gives an account of the two previous expeditions of
Hernandez de Cordova, and Juan de Grijalva, to the coast of New Spain,
both already given in the preceding chapter, but which it would have been
improper to have expunged in this edition of the original work of Diaz.

[Illustration: Sketch of Mexico and its Environs]

[1] Clavigero, History of Mexico, translated by C. Cullen, I. xiii.

PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR.

I, BERNAL DIAZ DEL CASTILLO, regidor of the loyal city of Guatemala,
while composing this most true history of the conquest of Mexico, happened
to see a work by Francisco Lopez de Gomara on the same subject, the
elegance of which made me ashamed of the vulgarity of my own, and caused
me to throw away my pen in despair. After having read it, however, I found
it full of misrepresentations of the events, having exaggerated the number
of natives which we killed in the different battles, in a manner so
extraordinary as to be altogether unworthy of credit. Our force seldom
much exceeded four hundred men, and even if we had found the multitudes he
speaks of bound hand and foot, we had not been able to put so many to
death. In fact we were often greatly at a loss to protect ourselves, and
were daily reduced to pray to God for deliverance from the many perils
which environed us on every side. Alaric and Atilla, those great
conquerors, did not slay such numbers of their enemies as Gomara pretends
we did in New Spain. He alleges that we burned many cities and temples,
forgetting that any of us, the true conquerors, were still alive to
contradict his assertions. He often magnifies the merit of one officer at
the expence of another, and even speaks of the exploits of some captains
who were not engaged in the expedition. He pretends that Cortes gave
secret orders for the destruction of our ships; whereas this was done by
the common consent of us all, that we might add the seamen to our small
military force. He most unjustly depreciates the character of Juan de
Grijalva, who was a very valiant commander. He omits the discovery of
Yucutan by Hernandez de Cordova. He erroneously supposes Garay to have
been actually in the expedition which he fitted out. His account of the
defeat of Narvaez