indeed, the necessary background to his story of the Conquest. It was a stage setting which raised the exploits of the conquerors to a lofty and almost epic altitude. The first serious attempt directly to discredit the accuracy of this description was made by an American writer, Mr. Robert A. Wilson. Wilson was an enthusiastic amateur who took a particular interest in the ethnology of the American Indians. He had travelled in Mexico. He knew something of the Indians of our Western territory, and he had read the Spanish chroniclers. The result of his observations was a thorough disbelief in the traditional picture of Aztec civilisation. He, therefore, set out to demolish it and to offer in its place a substitute based upon such facts as he had gathered and such theories as he had formed. After publishing a preliminary treatise which attracted some attention, he wrote a bulky volume entitled _A New History of the Conquest of Mexico_.[41] In the introduction to this book he declares that his visit to Mexico had shaken his belief "in those Spanish historic romances upon which Mr. Prescott has founded his magnificent tale of the conquest of Mexico." He adds that the despatches of Cortés are the only valuable written authority, and that these consist of two distinct parts,--first, "an accurate detail of adventures consistent throughout with the topography of the region in which they occurred"; and second, "a mass of foreign material, apparently borrowed from fables of the Moorish era, for effect in Spain." "It was not in great battles, but in a rapid succession of skirmishes, that he distinguished himself and won the character ... of an adroit leader in Indian war." Wilson endeavours to show, in the first place, that the Aztecs were simply a branch of the American Indian race; that their manners and customs were essentially those of the more northern tribes; that the origin of the whole race was Phoenician; and that the Spanish account of early Mexico is almost wholly fabulous. Writing of the different historians of the Conquest, he mentions Prescott in the following words:--