splendour of their state. On a slight suspicion, confirmed by a very imperfect evidence, that Guatimotzin had formed a scheme to shake off the yoke, and to excite his former subjects to take arms, Cortez, without the formality of a trial, ordered the unhappy monarch, together with the caziques of Tezeuco and Tacuba, the two persons of the greatest eminence in the empire, to be hanged; and the Mexicans, with astonishment and horror, beheld this disgraceful punishment inflicted upon persons to whom they were accustomed to look up with reverence hardly inferior to that which they paid to the gods themselves. The example of Cortez and his principal officers, encouraged and justified persons of subordinate rank to venture upon committing greater excesses.”

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It is not easy to see how Cortez and his men lied the glory of their repeated victories," by these actions-for these very victories were gained over a people who had no chance against European arms,and were infamous in themselves, being violations of every sacred right of humanity. What, indeed, could sully the reputation of the man after the butchery of six thousand Cholulas in cold blood? The notions of glory with which Robertson, in common with many other historians, was infected, are mere remnants of that corrupted morality which Popery disseminated, and which created the Cortezes and Pizarros of those days, and the Napoleons of our own. No truth can

be plainer to the sound sense of a real Christian, than that true glory can only be the result of great deeds done in a just cause. But Cortez's whole career was one perpetual union of perfidy and blood. His words were not to be relied on for a moment.

His

promises of kindness and of restoration to both Montezuma and Guatimotzin, were followed only by fetters, tortures, and hanging.

Such were the horrors of the siege of Mexico, that Bernal Diaz says, they can be compared to nothing but those of the destruction of Jerusalem. According to Bernal Diaz, the slain exceeded one hundred thousand; and those who died of famine, bad food and water, and infection, Cortez himself asserts, were more than fifty thousand. Cortez, on gaining possession of the city, ordered all the Mexicans out of it; and Bernal Diaz, an eye-witness, says, that "for three days and three nights, all the three roads leading from the city, were seen full of men, women, and children; feeble, emaciated, and forlorn, seeking refuge where they could find it. The fetid smell which so many thousands of putrid bodies emitted was intolerable, and occasioned some illness to the general of the conquerors. The houses, streets, and canals, were full of disfigured carcases; the ground of the city was in some places dug up by the citizens in search of roots to feed on; and many trees stripped of bark for the same purpose. The general caused the dead bodies to be buried, and large quantities of wood to be burnt through all the city, as much in order to purify the infected air, as to celebrate his victory."

But Providence failed not to visit the deeds of Cortez on himself, as he had done on Columbus. Bernal Diaz says, that "after the death of Guatimotzin, he became gloomy and restless; rising continually from his bed, and wandering about in the dark." That "nothing prospered with him, and that it was ascribed to the

curses he was loaded with." His government was acknowledged late by the crown, and soon divided with other authorities. He returned, like Columbus, to Europe to seek redress of wrongs heaped on him ; like him, not obtaining this redress, he sought to amuse his mind by fresh discoveries, and added California to the known regions; but the attempt to soothe his uneasy spirit was vain. Neglected, and even insulted by the crown, to which he had thus guiltily added vast dominions, he ended his days in the same fruitless and heart-wearing solicitation of the court which Columbus had done before.

CHAPTER VIH.

THE SPANIARDS IN PERU.

Their quiver is an open sepulchre; they are all mighty men.

Jeremiah v. 16.

They are cruel and have no mercy, their voice roareth like the sea; and they ride upon horses set in array as men of war.`

Jeremiah vi. 23.

THE scene widened, and with it the rapacity and rage for gold in the Spaniards. The possession and the plunder of Mexico only served to whet their appetite for carnage, and for one demon of avarice and cruelty to raise up ten. They had seen enough to convince

them that the continent which they had reached was immense, and Mexico filled their imagination with abundance of wealthy empires to seize upon and devour. Into these very odd Christians, not the slightest atom of Christian feeling or Christian principle ever entered. They were troubled with no remorse for the horrible excesses of crime and ravage which they had committed. The cry of innocent nations that they had plundered, enslaved, and depopulated, and which rose to heaven fearfully against them, never seemed to pierce the proud brutishness of their souls. They had but one idea: that all these swarming nations were revealed to them by Providence for a prey. The Pope had given them up to them; and they had but one feeling,-a fiery, quenchless, rabid lust of gold. That they might enlighten and benefit these nations-that they might establish wise and beneficent relations with them; that they might enrich themselves most innocently and legitimately in the very course of dispensing equivalent advantages, never came across their brains. It was the spirit of the age, coolly says Robertson-but he does not tell us how such came to be its spirit, after a thousand years of the profession of Christianity. We have seen how that came to pass; and we must go on from that time to the present, tracing the dreadful effects of the substitution of Popery for Christian truth and mercy.

Rumours of lands lying to the south came ever and anon upon the eager ears of the Spaniards,-lands still more abundant in gold, and vast in extent. On all hands the locust-armies of Moloch and Mammon were swarming, "seeking whom they might devour:"

and amongst these beautiful specimens of the teaching of the infallible and holy Mother Church, were three individuals settled in Panama, who were busily employed in concocting a scheme of discovery and of crime, of blood and rapine, southward; and who were destined to succeed to a marvellous degree. These worthy personages, who were occupied with so commendable and truly Catholic a speculation as that of finding out some peaceful or feeble people whom they might, as a matter of business, fall upon, plunder, and if necessary, assassinate, for their own aggrandizement-were no other than Francis Pizarro, the bastard of a Spanish gentleman, by a very low woman, who had been employed by his father in keeping his hogs till he run away and enlisted for a soldier; Diego de Almagro, a foundling; and Hernando de Luque, schoolmaster, and priest! a man who, by means which are not related, but may be imagined, had scraped together sufficient money to inspire him with the desire of getting more.

Pizarro was totally uneducated, except in hog-keeping, and the trade of a mercenary. He could not even read; and was just one of the most hardened, unprincipled, crafty, and base wretches which history in its multitudinous pages of crime and villany, has put on record. Almagro was equally daring, but had more honesty of character; and as for Luque, he appears to have been a careful, cunning attender to the main chance. Having clubbed together their little stock of money, and their large one of impudent hardihood, they procured a small vessel and a hundred and twelve men, and Pizarro taking the command, set out in quest of whatever good land fortune and the Pope's