Decline of Cortes 
9 
ting. This voyage of Ulloa was its last expiring ray. With 
an artistic adjustment to the situation that seems remarkable, 
Ulloa, after turning the end of the peninsula and sailing up the 
Lower Californian coast, sent home one solitary vessel, and van¬ 
ished then forever. Financially wrecked, and exasperated to 
the last degree by the slights and indignities of his enemies and 
of the Mendoza government, Cortes left for Spain early in 
1540 with the hope of retrieving his power by appearing in 
Wytfliet-Ptolemy Map of 1597. 
From Bancroft’s History of Arizona and New Mexico. 
person before the monarch. As in the case of Columbus, scant 
satisfaction was his, and the end was that the gallant captain, 
whose romantic career in the New World seems like a fairy 
tale, never again saw the scene of his conquests. 
Mendoza, the new viceroy of New Spain, a man of fine 
character but utterly without sympathy for Cortes, and who 
was instrumental in bringing about his downfall, now deter¬ 
mined on an expedition of great magnitude : an expedition that 
