estimates of two very important Spanish authorities, Las Casas and Torquemada, when correctly understood.[97] We may therefore suppose that the population of Tlascala was about 30,000. Now the population of the city of Granada, at the time of its conquest by Ferdinand and Isabella, is said by the greatest of Spanish historians[98] to have been about 200,000. It would thus appear that Cortes sometimes let his feelings run away with him; and, all things considered, small blame to him if he did! In studying the story of the Spanish conquest of America, liberal allowance must often be made for inaccuracies of statement that were usually pardonable and sometimes inevitable. [Footnote 96: "La qual ciudad ... es muy mayor que Granada, y muy mas fuerte, y de tan buenos edificios, y de mucha mas gente, que Granada tenia al tiempo que se gano." Cortes, _Relacion segunda al Emperador_, ap. Lorenzana, p. 58, cited in Prescott's _Conquest of Mexico_, vol. i. p. 401 (7th ed., London, 1855).] [Footnote 97: See Bandelier's _Archaeological Tour in Mexico_, Boston, 1885, pp. 160-164. Torquemada's words, cited by Bandelier, are "Quando entraron los Espanoles, dicen que tenia mas de quarenta mil vecinos esta ciudad." _Monarquia Indiana_, lib. iii. cap. xix. p. 281. A prolific source of error is the ambiguity in the word _vecinos_, which may mean either "inhabitants" or "householders." Where Torquemada meant 40,000 inhabitants, uncritical writers fond of the marvellous have understood him to mean 40,000 houses, and multiplying this figure by 5, the average number of persons _in a modern family_, have obtained the figure 200,000. But 40,000 houses peopled after the old Mexican fashion, with at least 200 persons in a house (to put it as low as possible), would make a city of 8,000,000 inhabitants! Las Casas, in his _Destruycion de las Indias_, vii., puts the population of Cholula at about 30,000. I observe that Llorente (in his _Oeuvres de Las Casas_, tom. i. p. 38) translates the statement correctly. I shall recur to this point below, vol. ii. p. 264.] [Footnote 98: Mariana, _Historia de Espana_, Valencia, 1795, tom. viii. p. 317.]