526 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



cure imperial pardon for his offenses, as well as sanction to continue 

 the conquest. Therefore, he pictured the El Dorado of which Span- 

 iards were wont to dream, whose wealth would fill the emperor's de- 

 pleted treasury, and whose greatness would augment the power of his 

 realm. All that he saw and did was extravagantly colored in such 

 language and terminology as would magnify his adventures, and at 

 the same time picture the conquest of a country after the Spanish 

 ideal. Besides this, he tells how the people were idolaters and human 

 sacrificers ; how he overturned their false idols and set up crosses and 

 images of the Virgin in their stead ; and how, hy constant appeals to 

 them to embrace the religion of the Spaniards, it pleased God to make 

 him the means of converting many. Thus, by emphasizing his acts 

 as religious, and giving his expedition the color of a holy war, did he 

 also secure the necessary and powerful influence of the priests at court, 

 who, in those days of a jealous Inquisition, the Romish sovereign dare 

 not ignore. 



These letters were dispatched by trusted messengers direct to his 

 Majesty in Spain, and, that their object might be the more surely ac- 

 complished, a quantity of virgin gold was sent with one of them, which 

 was either gathered from the Mexicans themselves or by the Spaniards 

 with native aid. 



These considerations should influence our judgment as to the truth 

 of Cortes's Aztec story. Even Mr. Hubert Bancroft says that "he 

 was ever ready with a lie when it suited his purpose," and that he sees 

 in his letters "calculated misstatements both direct and negative." 

 Dr. Robertson, too, though he accepts them as so much history, is 

 forced to confess that such and such a statement " seems improbable." 



Besides Cortes, however, both Gomora and Bernal Diaz speak of 

 bronze and tin, but it is only in the single instance when the mer- 

 chandise of the market-place is described. Gomora only enumerates the 

 metals, without describing the form in which they were used, and 

 Bernal Diaz's words are, " Thev had for sale bronze axes, copper, and 

 tin." 



But Gomora, it should be remembered, was Cortes's secretary and 

 chaplain, and, as Dr. Robertson says, he probably composed his work 

 at his master's dictation, we naturally expect him to repeat the latter's 

 highly-colored and delusive account of Aztec art. If he obtained ver- 

 sions from other lips besides his master's, it was all doubtless recorded 

 in the manner the latter desired. Indeed, Las Casas asserts this most 

 positively, and in another place adds also the charge of "downright 

 falsehood." Munoz and Robertson have rejected him as a reliable 

 authority, and even his contemporary, Bernal Diaz, has emphatically 

 accused him of adulation and inaccuracy. 



But Bernal Diaz himself can not be believed, and in him we have 

 the last of the three authorities for aboriginal smelting. A reading of 

 his work alone would lead the educated mind of to-day to doubt the 



