Halting thus upon this sunny shore, who were these Spaniards, and what was their mission and character? Let us briefly sketch them. Those were stirring times in "ocean chivalry." The dream of Columbus had been accomplished for twenty-five years; Balboa had crossed the isthmus a few years since and Panama was known. The islands of Cuba and Santa Domingo had been settled and made starting-points for further discoveries, and two years before--in 1517--a Cuban _hidalgo_, Hernandez de Cordova, blown by a fierce gale, with his three ships, far from his objective point of the Bahamas, landed on an unknown land where the Indians said "_Tectecan_"--"I do not understand you." What was this land? It was the peninsula now called Yucatan--"_tectecan_"--part of the Mexico of to-day. And on Cordova's return to Cuba, the governor of that island, Don Diego de Velasquez, bestirred himself right actively, impelled by certain longings for conquest he had long nourished, and by the adventures, and curious things of laboured gold brought back by Cordova. Fitting out four vessels, Velasquez put them under the command of his nephew, Juan de Grijalva, and quickly sent them forth to win him riches and fame in those unknown lands--May, 1518. Grijalva duly touched and coasted upon the islands and shores of Yucatan, and his name remains to-day in the great Grijalva river. Thence he followed the horseshoe curve of the Gulf of Mexico, and arrived and landed at San Juan de Ulua, the same point where we left Cortes and his Spaniards halting. To Grijalva is due the prestige of first landing on the shores of Mexico, and of having intercourse with its people of the Aztecs. But, Grijalva tarrying long, Don Diego de Velasquez had despatched another expedition, commanding his nephew to return, which the latter did and was received coldly by the jealous and ungenerous Governor, as he is painted by his historians. Still bent on greater conquest, Velasquez cast about for men, money, and ships, and his eye fell on the capable Hernando Cortes, the young Spaniard who, born in Estremadura in 1485, had set out, impatient of the old world, to seek his fortunes in the new: and had amassed--"God knows by what methods," as one of his chroniclers says--a small fortune under the Governor's rule. Here was the man, and, incidentally, here was part of the money! For Cortes was popular and daring, and notwithstanding the several occasions on which he had come into collision with the Governor and the law, Velasquez held him in certain favour.