But the riches of this great city had been heard of across the sea, and the Spaniards, as ever eager for gold, resolved to make its wealth their own. So an army was sent from Cuba to conquer Mexico, and Hernando Cortez was made its leader. Cortez was a brave soldier, but a cruel and treacherous man. In the year 1519 he landed his troops at Tabasco on the southern coast of Mexico; he found the natives prepared for war, but they were soon glad to fly from the Spaniards, leaving many of their number killed. Cortez then went on to Vera Cruz, where Montezuma had sent messengers to meet him; these messengers brought with them magnificent presents of gold and jewels which they gave to the Spaniards, at the same time trying to persuade them to go away from their country. But Cortez would not go away; he said he was going to the City of Mexico to see Montezuma himself, as the King of Spain had ordered him to do, and for fear his soldiers would not go with him, he burned all his ships so they could not go back to Cuba if they wanted to. [Illustration: THE MESSENGERS OF MONTEZUMA.] The Aztecs returned to Montezuma and told him that the Spaniards were on their way to his city. Montezuma did not know what to do; for although he was a good and kind king, he was not a great soldier. He sent other messengers and more presents, and commanded Cortez to go back, but Cortez pressed on. Now among the Aztecs there was a tradition that, hundreds of years before, their country had been visited by a glorious stranger from the East, a child of the sun, who had taught them how to till the ground, and all the arts of peace and war; and he lived with them many years, and they loved him and worshipped him as a god, and the stranger was very beautiful to look upon, with hair like the sunlight and eyes as bright as the stars, and his skin was as white as the snow which glistened on the tops of the volcanoes. And one day he called the Indians around him and told them that he must go away forever, but that some time in the years to come a race would come from the East, children of the sun like himself, and that they would demand the Aztec Kingdom for their own, and that it would do no good for the Indians to fight these strangers, for they were the children of the sun and could conquer all before them; and so saying, the stranger from the East vanished from their sight, and they saw him no more, though they mourned for him many days; for he had gone into the mysterious West, whence the sun goes at night, for all things that come from the East find a home at last in the land of the sunsetting, but save the sun himself, nothing ever comes back from that land, but all things remain forever hidden by the shadows which lie on its borders.