The natives reduced to slavery.--Laws and institutions.--Colony at Honduras.--Olid wrecked and taken prisoner.--Cortez starts for Honduras.--Diaz's account.--The two captives.--Difficulties to be encountered.--Marina married to Xamarillo.--Don Martin Cortez. --Demonstrations of homage.--Complaints of Diaz.--Scarcity of provisions.--Energy and forethought.--Construction of canoes.--The slough.--Foraging parties.--The tangled wilderness.--The Indian path.--The cannibal chiefs.--Their punishment.--Hostile attitude. --The soldiers ravenous.--Influence of the priests.--Care for the officers.--Plot against two chiefs.--The chiefs executed.--Their heroism.--Opinions of the Spaniards.--Night wanderings.--Plenty and want.--The terrible march.--New embarrassments.--Famine.--They reach Taica.--Humility of Diaz.--Cortez finds there is no insurrection to be quelled.--Exploring tour.--The brigantines.--Submission.--Present to the king.--Disappointment of Cortez.--The dispatches.--Bad news. --Reports of the death of Cortez.--Troubles in Spain.--The attempted voyage.--Fruitless endeavors to recall his friends.--Commissions.--The usurpers imprisoned.--Poor health of Cortez.--His return to Mexico. The great object of the Spanish adventurers was to extort gold from the natives. The proud cavaliers would not work, and the natives were not willing to surrender the fruits of their toil to support their haughty conquerors in splendor. Cortez consequently, though reluctantly, doomed them to slavery. They were driven by the lash to unpaid toil. It was an outrage defended only by the despotic assumptions of avarice. The Tlascalans, however, in acknowledgment of their services as allies of the Spaniards, were exempt from this degradation. In all other parts the wretched natives toiled under their task-masters, in the fields and in the mines, urged by the sole stimulus of the lash. The country thus became impoverished and beggared, and masters and slaves sank together. Cortez had now reduced, in subjection to the crown of Spain, an extent of country reaching along the Atlantic coast twelve hundred miles, and extending fifteen hundred miles on the Pacific shore. With energetic genius which has rarely been surpassed, the conqueror established laws and institutions, many of them eminently wise, for this vast realm.