Between voyages he permitted everybody from the mean king downward, to snub, swindle, plunder and defame himself and all who were loyal to him in misfortune. Because Columbus behaved like an old woman, his swindling pork contractor, Amerigo Vespucci, was allowed to give his name to the Americas. Because he had not the manhood to command, the hapless red Indians were outraged, enslaved and driven to wholesale suicide, leaping in thousands from the cliffs. For lack of a master the Spaniards performed such prodigies of cowardice and cruelty as the world has never known before or since, the native races were swept out of existence, and Spain set out upon a downward path, a moral lapse beyond all human power to arrest. Yet looking back, how wonderful is the prophecy in that name, Christ-Carrying Dove, borne by a saintly and heroic seaman whose mission, in the end, added two continents to Christianity. This text mainly contradicts a _Life of Columbus_, by Clements R. Markham, C. B. Phillip & Son, 1892. [Illustration: AMERICUS VESPUCCIUS] VI A. D. 1519 THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO “Hernando Cortes spent an idle and unprofitable youth.” So did I. And every other duffer is with me in being pleased with Cortes for setting an example. We, not the good boys, need a little encouragement. He was seven years old when Columbus found the Indies. That was a time when boys hurried to get grown up and join the search for the Fountain of Youth, the trail to Eldorado. All who had time to sleep dreamed tremendous dreams. Cortes became a colonist in Cuba, a sore puzzle to the rascal in command. When he clapped Cortes in irons the youngster slipped free and defied him. When he gave Cortes command of an expedition the fellow cheeked him. When he tried to arrest him the bird had flown, and was declared an outlaw. The soldiers and seamen of the expedition were horrified by this adventurer who landed them in newly discovered Mexico, then sank the ships lest they should wish to go home. They stood in the deadly mists of the tropic plains, and far above them glowed the Star of the Sea, white Orizaba crowned with polar snows. They marched up a hill a mile and a half in sheer height through many zones of climate, and every circumstance of pain and famine to the edge of a plateau crowned by immense volcanoes, a land of plenty, densely peopled, full of opulent cities. They found that this realm was ruled by an emperor, famous for his victorious wars, able, it seemed, to place a million warriors in the field, and hungry for captives to be first sacrificed to the gods, and afterward eaten at the banquets of the nobility and gentry. The temples were actually fed with twenty thousand victims a year. The Spanish invading force of four hundred men began to feel uncomfortable.