1528.] PLANS OF CORTES FOR FURTHER CONQUESTS. 51 



time, employed vessels in surveying the coasts of the Mexican Gulf, 

 and those of the Atlantic, farther north ; and he built others on the 

 Pacific side, for similar purposes, two of which he sent, as early as 

 1 526, to the East Indies, in aid of the armaments despatched thither 

 from Spain, under Loyasa.* 



The first expedition made by the Spaniards along the Pacific 

 coasts, westward from Mexico, was conducted by Pedro Nunez 

 Maldonado, one of the officers of Cortes, who sailed from the 

 mouth of the River of Zacatula in July, 1528, and passed nearly six 

 months in surveying the shores between that point and the mouth 

 of the River of Santiago, about a hundred leagues farther north- 

 west. The territory of which this coast formed the southern border 

 was then called Xalisco ; it was entirely unknown to the Europeans, 

 and was inhabited by fierce tribes of savages, who had never been 

 subdued by the Mexicans. Maldonado brought back flattering 

 accounts of its fertility, and of the abundance of precious metals 

 in its interior, which did not fail to excite the attention of his 

 employer, as well as of others among their countrymen. 



Cortes was at that time in Spain, whither he had gone in 1528, 

 chiefly with the object of obtaining some more definite recognition 

 of his powers and rights in the New World than had been hitherto 

 granted. He was received at Madrid with the most signal honors 

 by his sovereign, the celebrated emperor Charles V. ; and, on his 

 return to Mexico, he carried with him patents, confirming him 

 as captain-general of that country, then called New Spain, and 

 creating him a grandee of Castile, with the title of Marquis of the 

 Valley of Oaxaca ; to which was attached the possession of vast tracts 

 of country in America, including the port of Tehuantepec, on the 

 Pacific. He also procured from the emperor a capitulation, or 

 charter, empowering him to discover and conquer any islands in the 



* The accounts of the early Spanish expeditions of discovery on the North Pacific 

 side of America, contained in the present chapter, are derived from — the published 

 letters of Cortes, and a number of letters and reports from him and other Spanish 

 commanders, hitherto unpublished, copies of which, made from the originals in 

 Madrid, were kindly placed at the disposition of the writer by W. H. Prescott, of 

 Boston, the accomplished author of the Histories of Ferdinand and Isabella, and of 

 the Conquest of Mexico — the Historia General de las lndias, by Herrera — the 

 Cronica de Nueva Espafia, by Gomara — the Historia de la Conquista de Mexico, 

 by Bernal Dias — the Raccolte de Viaggi, by Ramusio — the Collection of Voyages 

 and Discoveries, by Hakluyt — the History of Voyages in the Pacific, by Burney — 

 and the Introduction to the Journal of the Voyage made, in 1792, by Captains 

 Galiano and Valdes, in the Spanish schooners Sutil and Mexicana, published at 

 Madrid, by order of the government, in 1802, to which references will also be fre- 

 quently made in the succeeding chapters. 



