Other stirring events crowded rapidly on. A swift ship was despatched to Spain with the wheel of gold; the beautiful feather-work, and the other rare presents of the Aztecs, all given over by the Spaniards as a royal gift to the young Spanish king; together with a voluminous epistle. This was sent with the design of forestalling the machinations of Velasquez; and though the vessel touched at Cuba, it escaped detention, and safely arrived in Spain. But meantime disaffection arose in the new colony, and a conspiracy was formed to seize a vessel and escape to Cuba, by some of the Spaniards who were discontented and fearful of the future. The plot was discovered and the authors seized and executed, and a dramatic sequel to this conspiracy came about. Cortes and some of his advisers resolved to prevent the recurrence of any further danger of this nature; to put it out of the power of any to desert; to place the knowledge of the inevitable before his troops, that the conquest must be undertaken or death found in the attempt. He sank his ships! Yes; the brigantines which had borne them thither, and were their only means of retreat from those savage shores, were dismantled and destroyed. And now the Spaniards resolutely turn their faces to the mountains. Threats and entreaties are stilled; the colony is established, the base secured, the ships are sunk, save that single white-winged caravel far over the waters of the gulf, prow to the shores of Spain. The Mass is said, the books are closed. "Forward! my comrades," said Cortes; "before us lies a mountain road; and adventure, gold, and glory!" The traveller of to-day, as he traverses by rail the desert coast zone of the Mexican littoral, and ascends the steep slopes of the eastern Cordillera of the Sierra Madre, to gain access to the Great Plateau or Valley of Mexico beyond it, reposing amid the cushions of his Pullman car, will neither endure the fatigue which the _Conquistadores_ suffered nor be assailed, night and day, with the menace of savage foes on every hand. But the grand and varied setting still remains: the strange and beautiful fairyland of Nature's rapid transformation scenes, the changing landscape and successive climates of this remarkable region. The sandy wastes give place to tropical forests and fertile valleys, with their bright accompaniment of profuse flower- and bird-life. These, in turn, disappear from the changing panorama, and the traveller reaches the appalling escarpments of the Mexican Andes, looking down from time to time from dizzy ridges, where the ascending steel lines of the railroad spiral has brought him, to where distant fertile vales lie in the glimmering haze, thousands of feet below. And then the scene changes, and the dark rocky ribs and bleak plateau show that the summit is reached, ten thousand feet above the level of the ocean's ebb and flow.