Ill] AND HISTORIC TIMES 269 



Cortes set sail from Cuba for Yucatan in February, 1519, 

 with 663 men, 200 Indians, and sixteen horses. In his first 

 battle two horses were killed and in the second another, and 

 all the survivors were more or less severely wounded. Cortes 

 later on was joined by Alvarado at Vera Cruz with twenty 

 horses and one hundred and fifty men. Cortes had mortally 

 offended the governor of Cuba by reporting direct to Spain, 

 and the latter sent out a force under Narvaez, who was to 

 supersede Cortes and send him back in chains to Cuba. 

 Narvaez had eighteen vessels, which carried nine hundred men, 

 of whom eighty were cavalry. Cortes by this time had only five 

 mounted men, but by a successful night attack he captured 

 Narvaez and his whole army. The common soldiers were only 

 too ready to transfer their allegiance to so vigorous a captain 

 as Cortes, and the latter had now eighty-five horsemen. The 

 conquest of Mexico was accomplished in 1521, and adventurers 

 from Spain soon poured in, bringing other horses from the 

 Antilles from time to time. 



We need not hesitate to believe that the horses brought by 

 Alvarado and Narvaez were of the same kinds and colours as 

 those of Cortes, the colours of which we have just enumerated. 

 As Cuba had been settled from Hispaniola and by 1538 had 

 already great numbers of horses, we may safely assume that 

 the horses brought to Darien, if not by Balboa (1510) most 

 certainly by Pedrarias, who was established there before Cortes 

 sailed for Mexico, and the horses brought into Peru by Pizarro 

 in 1526 were of the same kinds and colours as those described 

 by Bernal Diaz, and in some of which we have recognized 

 the descendants of the ancient grey horses of the northern 

 parts of Spain and of the dun-coloured horses of the same 

 country. We need not then be surprised to find horses of 

 many colours including (striped dun) in Mexico and in the 

 Western States, and it is now certain that the dun horses with 

 black stripes which Darwin and so many others have supposed 



armada, porque trujo un navio suyo, y la yegua y un negro, e" cazabe e tocinos; 

 porque en aquella sazon no se podia hallar caballos ni negros sino era a peso de 

 oro, y a esta causa no pasaron mas caballos, porque na los babia. For fuller 

 explanation of the horses' colours see Addenda. 



