16 



BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF CORTEZ. 



and, in the meanwhile, after considerable deliberation, resolved to 

 fit out another armament on a scale, in some degree, commensurate 

 with the military subjugation of the country, should he find 

 himself opposed by its sovereign and people. After considerable 

 doubt, difficulty and delay, he resolved to entrust this expedition 

 to the command of Hernando Cortez ; " the last man," says 

 Prescott, " to whom Velasquez, — could he have foreseen the 

 results, — would have confided the enterprise." 



It will not be foreign to our purpose to sketch, briefly, the 

 previous life of a man who subsequently became so eminent in the 

 history of both worlds. Seven years before Columbus planted the 

 standard of Castile and Arragon in the West Indies, Hernando 

 Cortez, was born, of a noble lineage, in the town of Medellin, 

 in the Province of Estremadura, in Spain. His infancy was frail 

 and delicate, but his constitution strengthened as he grew, until, 

 at the age of fourteen, he was placed in the venerable university 

 of Salamanca, where his parents, who rejoiced in the extreme 

 vivacity of his talents, designed to prepare him for the profession 

 of law, the emoluments of which were, at that period, most 

 tempting in Spain. But the restless spirit of the future conqueror 

 was not to be manacled by the musty ritual of a tedious science 

 whose pursuit would confine him to a quiet life. He wasted two 

 years at the college, and, like many men who subsequently became 

 renowned either for thought or action, was finally sent home in 

 disgrace. Nevertheless, in the midst of his recklessness, and by the 

 quickness of his genius, he had learned " a little store of Latin," 

 and acquired the habit of writing good prose, or of versifying 

 agreeably. His father, — Don Martin Cortez de Monroy, and 

 his mother, Dona Catalina Pizarro Altamirano, — seem to have 

 been accomplished people, nor is it improbable, that the greater 

 part of their son's information was obtained under the influence of 

 the domestic circle. At college he was free from all restraint, — 

 giving himself up to the spirit of adventure, the pursuit of pleasure, 

 and convivial intercourse, — so that no hope was entertained of his 

 further improvement from scholastic studies. His worthy parents 

 were, moreover, people of limited fortune, and unable to prolong 

 these agreeable but profitless pursuits. Accordingly, when Cortez 

 attained the age of seventeen, they yielded to his proposal to 

 enlist under the banner of Gonsalvo of Cordova, and to devote 

 himself, heart and soul, to the military life which seemed most 

 suitable for one of his wild, adventurous and resolute disposition. 



