444 REVIEWS—A NEW HISTORY OF THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO. 
our author specially takes credit for, he has the more valuable quali- 
ties of an eye-witness, and steps into the witness box to tell us what 
he has himself seen, amid scenes rendered famous by events which 
historians have located on the lofty table-lands of Mexico, and which 
owe some of their most characteristic incidents to the peculiar natural 
and artificial features of the country. An extract will best suffice to 
illustrate his mode of turning his own personal observations to ac- 
count; and for this purpose we select his description of Cholula, 
because, as he says.in diverse forms throughout the work, his faith 
was shaken at Tlascala, and Cholula extinguished it. It is surprising, 
indeed, to find how narrow a basis sufficed to furnish a firm footing 
for his original doubts. ‘‘The discovery of a common flit arrow- 
head,” he remarks at page 78,—“ an indispensable part of the usual 
weapons of a North American Indian—upon the pyramidical mound 
of Cholula, first aroused suspicion, and set the author upon this in- 
quiry into the pretended civilization of Montezuma and his Aztecs. 
The investigation has resulted in his conviction that a large portion of 
the narrative of Cortes was designedly untrue, and written purposely 
to impose upon the Emperor ; and, further, that all the subsequent 
additions to that author are pure fabrications. He was, moreover, 
led to believe that the narrative, bearmg the name of Bernal Diaz, 
was written for the purpose of sustaining other histories already need- 
ing a more ample foundation than that furnished by Cortes. It is 
probably nothing more than the story of Gomora, with the absurdities 
pointed out by Las Casas partially deducted.” The author repeats in 
a foot-note that his first suspicions of the civilization of the Indians 
of the Table-land was the discovery of this arrow-head. He is evi- 
dently not aware that flint arrow-heads are by no means rare at 
Marathon and elsewhere in Greece, occur on Italian sites, and have 
been found abundantly in France and Britain; or would he consider 
that such discoveries furnished equally cogent grounds for lawyer-like 
doubts about the civilization of any, and every prior historical period? 
This, however, is the mere starting point. The following extract 
combines historical criticism with the results of personal observation. 
Having stated his views of the Tlascalan war, he thus proceeds :— 
The scene now shifts to an adjoining tribe, one bearing the familiar name of 
Cholula, in common with a mud-built village, and an immense earthen mound, 
which distinguished it, then, as now, among all the villages of the table-land. 
For once we shall follow the standard historians, and afterwards add our own. 
