Documents printed by the Mexican government, including the regular _memorias_ and other reports of different departments and officials, constitute a most valuable source of information. Partisan writings and political pamphlets are a noticeable feature of Mexican historical literature, indispensable to the historian who would study both sides of every question. Prominent Mexicans have formed collections of such works, a dozen of which I have united in one, making two hundred and eighteen volumes of _Papeles Varios_, some five thousand pamphlets, besides nearly as many more collected by my own efforts. The newspapers of a country cannot be disregarded, and my collection is not deficient in this class of data, being particularly rich in official periodicals. * * * * * The conquest of Mexico, which begins this history, has the peculiar attractions of forming the grandest episode in early American annals from a military point of view, and in opening to the world the richest, most populous, and most civilized country on the northern continent, and of gradually incorporating it in the sisterhood of nations as the foremost representative of Latin-American states. On the other hand, an episode which presents but a continuation of the bloody path which marked the advance of the conquerors in America, and which involved the destruction not only of thousands of unoffending peoples but of a most fair and hopeful culture, is not in its results the most pleasing of pictures. But neither in this pit of Acheron nor in that garden of Hesperides may we expect to discover the full significance of omnipotent intention. From the perpetual snow-cap springs the imperceptibly moving glacier. A grain of sand gives no conception of the earth, nor a drop of water of the sea, nor the soft breathing of an infant of a hurricane; yet worlds are made of atoms, and seas of drops of water, and storms of angry air-breaths. Though modern Mexico can boast a century more of history than the northern nations of America, as compared with the illimitable future her past is but a point of time. CONTENTS OF THIS VOLUME. CHAPTER I. VOYAGE OF HERNANDEZ DE CÓRDOBA TO YUCATAN. 1516-1517. PAGE. A Glance at the State of European Discovery and Government in America at the Opening of this Volume—Diego Velazquez in Cuba—Character of the Man—A Band of Adventurers Arrives from Darien—The Governor Counsels them to Embark in Slave-catching—Under Hernandez de Córdoba they Sail Westward and Discover Yucatan—And are Filled with Astonishment at the Large Towns and Stone Towers they See there—They Fight the Natives at Cape Catoche—Skirt the Peninsula to Champoton—Sanguinary Battle—Return to Cuba—Death of Córdoba 1 CHAPTER II. JUAN DE GRIJALVA EXPLORES THE WESTERN SIDE OF THE MEXICAN GULF. 1518.