The poetical imagination of Columbus was one of the sources of his power, whereby he anticipated with undoubting faith the realisation of his grand life-work. But from the position in which Cortes was placed, it was his interest to give currency to the highly-coloured visions of his first pioneers, rather than to transmit to Europe the colder narrative of matured experience. Approaching the Mexican capital, he exclaims in his first burst of enthusiasm: “We could compare it to nothing but the enchanted scenes we had read of in _Amadis de Gaul_, from the great towers and temples, and other edifices of lime and stone which seemed to rise up out of the water.” To achieve the recognised mastery of this scene of enchantment, he had not only to conquer its Mexican lords, but to defeat his Spanish foes, and to win to his side that Emperor who, while shaping Europe’s history in one of its mightiest revolutions, could control the destinies of the New World. When reading the accounts transmitted to Spain of the gorgeous treasures of Montezuma’s palaces, we have to bear in remembrance that the treasures themselves perished in the retreat of the _noche triste_, as the city itself vanished in the final siege and capture. The very dreams of an excited imagination could become realities of the past to the narrators themselves, when every test of their truth had been swept away. On the 9th of November 1519, Cortes made his first entry into the capital of Montezuma, and from thence he wrote to the Emperor Charles V., giving an account of the Indian metropolis, with its palaces and stately mansions, far surpassing in grandeur and beauty the ancient Moorish capital of Cordova. Conduits of solid masonry supplied the city with water, and furnished means of maintaining hanging-gardens luxurious as those of ancient Babylon. “There is one place,” says Cortes, “somewhat inferior to the rest, attached to which is a beautiful garden with balconies extending over it, supported by marble columns, and having a floor formed of jasper elegantly inlaid”; and he adds, “Within the city, the palaces of the cacique Montezuma are so wonderful that it is hardly possible to describe their beauty and extent. I can only say that in Spain there is nothing equal to them.” The population of ancient Mexico, “the greatest and noblest city of the whole New World,” as Cortes styles it, amounted, according to the lowest computation of its conquerors, to three hundred thousand; and its streets and canals were illuminated at night by the blaze from the altars of numberless teocallis that reared their pyramidal summits in the streets and squares of what Prescott fitly calls “this city of enchantment.” Vast causeways, defended by drawbridges, and wide enough for ten or twelve horsemen to ride abreast, attracted the admiring wonder of the Spaniards by the skill and geometrical precision with which they were constructed. “The great street facing the southern causeway was wide, and extended some