Montezuma found no difficulty in following the counsel of the majority, though the mystic warning of Karee had not wholly faded from his mind. A new embassy was immediately despatched, consisting of a numerous suite of powerful nobles, and a long train of servants bearing rich presents of gold, and other valuables, and charged with a message couched in terms of humble and earnest supplication, proposing, if the Spaniards would now return, not only to send them home laden with gold to their utmost wish, but to pay an annual tribute of gold to their master, the king of Spain. Finding that this bribe only fired the grasping conqueror with a more fixed determination to secure the whole prize for which he had so long, and against such fearful odds, contended, the messengers yielded the point, and threw wide open to the dreaded foe every avenue to the heart of the empire, assuring him, in the name of the Emperor, that he should be received as a brother, and entertained with the consideration due to the powerful representative of a mighty monarch. The march of the Spaniards was now a continued triumph. No longer compelled to fight their way on, they had time to enjoy the rich and varied scenery, to scale the mountain, explore the caverns and ravines of the sierras, and the craters of the volcanoes, and show to the admiring natives, by their agility and love of adventure, that fighting and conquest had neither tamed their spirits, nor exhausted their physical powers. As they advanced, they were continually surprised and delighted with the growing evidences of civilization and high prosperity which met them on every side. In the cultivation of the land, in the style of architecture, and in all that constitutes the refinement, or contributes to the comfort of life, the regions they were now traversing very far exceeded the best of those through which they had passed. They were continually gaining more exalted ideas of the power, wealth and glory of the great Montezuma, and more enlarged views of the magnificence of their own adventure, and the importance of their position and movements. The ambition of Cortez reached to the viceroyalty of this splendid empire; and, though accompanied by a mere handful of men, their past achievements inspired him with confidence, that he could carry every thing before him.