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all men incapable of fighting had been sent, together with their treasure, into the forests and mountains. Both its situation and its defences render Izzuccan a formidable place; but I weary myself by enumerating all these fortified towns. Let it suffice to say that this city was taken by assault, and that the greater part of its defenders, fearing to be captured, sprang from the walls and fled towards the neighbouring river. The town once captured, Cortes gave quarter to the inhabitants, but ordered them to bring back the fugitives with all their treasure. They quickly returned, each to his own home, and the town was repopulated.

Two messengers were sent to the cacique who had fled with the people of Temistitan and Colua, but he refused to come, preferring exile. This cacique had a bastard brother older than himself, and also a grandson ten years old, who was of the legitimate line. Cortes named the latter king, but appointed his great uncle as his tutor, associating also in the government three inhabitants of Guaccachiulla, who were noted for their fidelity and loyalty. These counsellors were to administer the country for their people, until the youth became of age and able to govern in person.

This town of Izzuccan numbers three thousand houses and about a hundred temples, consecrated to various gods. Human victims are sacrificed in these temples. Cortes counted them from a lofty place, and ordered every one of them, together with the statues in them, to be burned. He forbade the celebration of any such ceremonies, declaring that God, who made the heavens and the earth, detested homicide, and that the killing of man by man was repugnant both to the law of God and of Nature.

Izzuccan is dominated by a fortress and surrounded by hills which protect it against the winds, so the temperature is warm. Cotton grows there in abundance. The soil is well watered, and during the summer the irrigation

canals keep the fields green. Fruits are numerous and vegetables are not wanting. There are many towns and hamlets.

With the occupation of Guaccachiulla and the fall of Izzucca, the news that Fortune once more showed herself a tender mother to the Spaniards spread through the country. At this turn of her wheel the natives abandoned the people of Temistitan, and hastened to come back to Cortes. Messengers arrived from every direction, offering submission, saying that the only reason they had not sooner ventured to render the homage due to the great sovereign power the Spaniards possessed, was because they feared the reprisals of the Coluans and the great lords of Temistitan; but seeing that, thanks to their protection, there was nothing more to fear from the tyranny of the neighbouring caciques, they came to offer their submission.

It is time to bring this overlong narrative to an end. Some prisoners informed Cortes that after Muteczuma's death, his brother, Hastapalappa, had been named king at Temistitan, but after a reign of four months had died of a smallpox and had been succeeded by his sister's son, Catamazin'; of Muteczuma's three sons, the first had been killed at the bridges, during the retreat; the second was mad, and the third paralysed. Quauhtemotzin employed all his resources in collecting weapons, especially very long lances, with which it was hoped to strike the horses from a distance, for an attack by the cavalry is what they most fear. The new sovereign expected that Cortes would take the offensive, for he understood that all the neighbouring country was falling away from him and asking help from the Spaniards against himself.

In this he was not mistaken, for Cortes had ordered thirteen of those boats having two banks of oars, which

'Quauhtemotzin: the proper name of this ruler will be henceforth used in the text.

are called brigantines, to be constructed, intending with them to ravage the country bordering the great salt lake. He hoped that when Temistitan was deprived of provisions and its water supply was cut off, the city would be reduced to the necessity of accepting the yoke of the King of Spain. Moreover, he sent four ships to Hispaniola to obtain horses, a sufficient number of musketeers, and a quantity of powder.

Cortes writes that this region, with its mountains, rivers, and valleys well grown with fruit trees, resembles Spain; and he therefore asks the Emperor to confirm the name, New Spain, which he has given to the part he has discovered. He likewise, at the close of his most important report, begs his Majesty to send a man eminent for his virtues and experience to visit and report upon the conquered country. This letter' is dated the thirtieth day of October, 1520, and was written at the fortress he founded and named Segura de la Frontera.

This is the Second Letter of Relation. It was first published by Cromberger in Seville in 1522.

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BOOK VII

HILE these writings lay ready in my cabinet awaiting the absent secretaries from whom distance and insecure roads separate me, behold the pregnant ocean produces a new, recently born progeny. I shall therefore conclude this work with two appendices exceeding in interest anything preceding it. In the beginning I shall speak of the journey round the world, the discovery of the spice islands, and the most extraordinary and almost incredible events. In the second place I will state by what means, by what stratagems, force of arms, and courage Fernando Cortes, assisted by the Tascaltecans and the people of Guazuzingo and other peoples hostile to Muteczuma, captured the great city of Temistitan, annihilated and almost destroyed it from top to bottom. This conquest notably increases the number of states subject to Your Holiness, and especially the extent of the kingdoms of Great Castile.

I shall begin with the journey round the world and the description of the spiceries; but I must go back somewhat in my narrative. It was, if you remember, while the Emperor was presiding over the Cortes of Catalonia at Barcelona, and Your Holiness directed the affairs of our Imperial Indian Council, that the Portuguese, Ferdinand Magellan, who had quit the Portuguese service, was commissioned to visit the Moluccan archipelago, where spices grow. Magellan had, in fact, passed seven years at Cochin, Cananor, at Calicut in the Chersonesus, other

wise called Malacca, and was therefore acquainted with the position of these islands. They are not very far distant from the sea of Chersonesus, that is to say Malacca, and other markets.

Our Council, over which Your Holiness presided, confided this mission accordingly to Magellan, who sailed from the ocean port of Barrameda, at the mouth of the Bethis, on the twentieth of September, 1519. He commanded five vessels, of which the flagship was called Trinidad, and the others San Antonio, Victoria, Concepcion, and Santiago. They were manned by a crew of two hundred and thirty-seven men. Of these ships only two ever returned to Spain, of which one, after abandoning the flagship, returned without accomplishing anything; the second reappeared laden with precious woods and spices, three years after its departure from Spain; that is, it arrived on the sixth of September, 1522, at the same port from which it started. Very few of the crew survived, and the Admiral himself had perished at Matam, one of the islands of the archipelago, killed by the islanders. We shall relate these things farther on.

There exists between the Castilians and the Portuguese an inveterate hatred, and Magellan sought under every pretext and on divers occasions to kill a number of Castilians who refused to obey him. At the proper time I shall relate this, but for the moment I confine myself to the description of the voyage.1

The fleet first touched at the Fortunate Isles and afterwards sighted the archipelago of the Gorgades, which their actual lord, the King of Portugal, calls the Cape Verde Islands. From this point, Magellan sailed directly to the right, leaving our continent behind, towards that

An account of Magellan's voyage was kept by a Venetian, Antonio Pigafetta, who accompanied him. The original MSS. is preserved in the Ambrosian Library at Milan. Consult the English translation by James Alexander Robertson, Magellan's Voyage around the World (1906).

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