While the discoverer of the greatest ocean was still striving to probe its farther mysteries, a handsome, athletic, brilliant young Spaniard, who was destined to make much more noise in history, was just beginning to be heard of on the threshold of America, of whose central kingdoms he was soon to be conqueror. Hernando Cortez came of a noble but impoverished Spanish family, and was born in Estremadura ten years later than Balboa. At the age of fourteen he was sent to the University of Salamanca to study for the law; but the adventurous spirit of the man was already strong in the slender lad, and in a couple of years he left college, and went home determined upon a life of roving. The air was full of Columbus and his New World; and what spirited youth could stay to pore in musty law-books then? Not the irrepressible Hernando, surely. Accidents prevented him from accompanying two expeditions for which he had made ready; but at last, in 1504, he sailed to San Domingo, in which new colony of Spain he made such a record that Ovando, the commander, several times promoted him, and he earned the reputation of a model soldier. In 1511 he accompanied Velasquez to Cuba, and was made _alcalde_ (judge) of Santiago, where he won further praise by his courage and firmness in several important crises. Meantime Francisco Hernandez de Cordova, the discoverer of Yucatan,--a hero with this mere mention of whom we must content ourselves,--had reported his important discovery. A year later, Grijalva, the lieutenant of Velasquez, had followed Cordova's course, and gone farther north, until at last he discovered Mexico. He made no attempt, however, to conquer or to colonize the new land; whereat Velasquez was so indignant that he threw Grijalva in disgrace, and intrusted the conquest to Cortez. The ambitious young Spaniard sailed from Santiago (Cuba) Nov. 18, 1518, with less than seven hundred men and twelve little cannon of the class called falconets. No sooner was he fairly off than Velasquez repented having given him such a chance for distinction, and directly sent out a force to arrest and bring him back. But Cortez was the idol of his little army, and secure in its fondness for him he bade defiance to the emissaries of Velasquez, and held on his way.[4] He landed on the coast of Mexico March 4, 1519, near where is now the city of Vera Cruz (the True Cross), which he founded,--the first European town on the mainland of America as far north as Mexico. The landing of the Spaniards caused as great a sensation as would the arrival in New York to-day of an army from Mars.[5] The awe-struck natives had never before seen a horse (for it was the Spanish who brought the first horses, cattle, sheep, and other domestic animals to the New World), and decided that these strange, pale new-comers who sat on four-legged beasts, and had shirts of iron and sticks that made thunder, must indeed be gods.