The publication of Prescott’s second work, “The History of the Conquest of Mexico,” was justly regarded as the greatest achievement in American historical writing. The theme was not a new one. Other writers had essayed to tell the story of Hernando Cortés and of the marvellous empire which that daring and resourceful captain had converted into a province of Spain, but never before had one attempted the task in whom patient research, careful reflection, and brilliant historical imagination were so happily blended. The result of Prescott’s labors was hailed with delight throughout the English-speaking world. His work was speedily translated into many languages and his subject acquired an interest which it has never since lost. To use the words of another American scholar,[1] who did not agree with Prescott in many of the conclusions he reached respecting the so-called Aztec civilization, “It called into existence a larger number of works than was ever before written upon any people of the same number and of the same importance.” In order to appreciate the sensation the book created we must go backward almost two generations and place ourselves in a country which numbered hardly more than eighteen millions of inhabitants--less people than now dwell in the New England States and in the four neighboring Middle States,--New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. These people were for the most part scattered throughout the regions bordering upon the Atlantic Ocean and the Great Lakes. Comparatively few were to be found west of the Mississippi River. Texas was an independent republic. California and the lands adjacent belonged to Mexico. The ownership of the vast region then vaguely known as Oregon had not been settled. Alaska was Russian territory. Between the Mississippi and the Sierras of California stretched great wastes of prairie and desert, of mountain and table-land, which now support millions of people, but which even so far-seeing a statesman as Daniel Webster then supposed would never become fit for human habitation. Communication between even the most thickly-settled States was exasperatingly infrequent. The first public telegraph line had not been constructed; the railway system of the country was still in feeble infancy; letters were carried at so much per mile and at a very heavy charge; the postage upon books was exceedingly costly. Only three years had elapsed since the first transatlantic steamship line (the Cunard) had started its pioneer vessel across the ocean. Newspapers for a long time afterwards headed their columns with announcements of news so many “days later from Europe.”