The Spaniards on the Isthmus of Darien: Cortez and Nunez

Descending the mountains on their southern sides, Nunez and his followers made their way to the sea. As the tide came flowing in upon the sandy beach, the leader took a banner on which the Virgin and Child were painted, and under them the arms of Castile and Leon. Then drawing his sword and throwing his buckler over his shoulder, he marched into the water until it covered his knees, and waving his banner he with a loud voice again proclaimed that he took possession of that sea and its islands, in the name of the sovereigns of Spain. A testimonial to that effect was again signed by all, and the conquest was regarded as complete. After that Nunez made voyages along the coast of the Pacific, and heard tidings of the rich kingdom of Peru, where the Incas or monarchs ate and drank out of vessels of gold. That kingdom, then eminent for its civilization, was afterward conquered by Pizarro, with circumstances of great cruelty and wickedness. Vasco Nunez de Balboa, falsely accused of traitorous intentions by his jealous rival and successor, Davila, was beheaded at Acla, in Central America, by order of that officer, in 1517, when he was in the forty-second year of his age.

At about the time when Central America was first colonized, Cuba was conquered by three hundred Spaniards under Diego Velasquez, who had been sent from Hispaniola for the purpose, by Don Diego Columbus, in 1511. Hernando Cortez, destined to make a conspicuous figure in history, accompanied the expedition, and was made the chief magistrate of Santiago, the Spanish capital of the island. He was a handsome, well educated, enterprising young man, then only twenty-six years of age, and had just married one of the young ladies who came from Spain with the Vice-Queen of Hispaniola. Cortez soon amassed a considerable fortune. He was a cruel worker of the natives in his mines. "How many of the Indians died in extracting gold for him," wrote Las Casas, "God will have kept a better account than I have."

Mexico had just been discovered by Juan de Grijalva. Cortez was sent with an expedition to conquer it. He set out from Cuba late in 1518, with five hundred and fifty Spaniards, nearly three hundred Indians, a few negroes, thirteen horses and ten brass cannon, in ten ships, and landed on the shore of Tabasco, on the 4th of March, 1519. There he had a battle with the natives, and so terrified them with his horses and great guns, that they fled in dismay. They gave him as a peace-offering, a beautiful Mexican slave girl, the daughter of a cacique, whom Cortez caused to be baptized with the name of Donna Marina. She was very intelligent, and bore a conspicuous part in the fortunes of Cortez. "Without her aid," says Arthur Helps, "his conquest of Mexico would never have been accomplished."

Pushing into the interior, Cortez was met by deputies of Montezuma, a native emperor and ruler of an empire which had existed full three hundred years. The emperor hearing of the approach of the Spaniards, sent to inquire what was their errand. "Has your king any gold?" asked Cortez. The deputies answered, "Yes." The invader replied: "Let him send it to me, for I and my companions have a complaint-a disease of the heart, which only gold can cure." This was the dreadful malady which afflicted all of the Spanish discoverers and conquerors; and the records of their search for the remedy have stained the pages of history with pictures of the most horrid crimes.

Cortez took possession of the country in the usual form, and planted the seeds of a colony on the site of Vera Cruz. He destroyed his ships to prevent malcontents among his followers returning in them; and, winning to his standard several native tribes who had suffered from Montezuma's tax-gatherers, and were ready to rebel, he marched toward the Mexican capital in the month of August, over the same route which was pursued by General Scott and his conquering army more than three hundred years afterward. He fought his way against overwhelming numbers who were terrified by the flashing of the armor of the Spaniards and the thunders of their cannon. The simple people regarded the invaders as divine personages and made human sacrifices to placate them; but the avarice and ambition of the Spaniards could not be appeased until they themselves had sacrificed thousands of human beings on the alter of their lust.