Putting aside, then, the single topic of Aztec ethnology and tribal organisation, it remains to see how far the rest of Prescott's history of the Conquest has stood the test of recent criticism. Here one finds himself on firmer ground, and it may be asserted with entire confidence that Prescott's accuracy cannot be impeached in aught that is essential to the truth of history. His careful use of his authorities, and his excellent judgment in checking the evidence of one by the evidence of another, remain unquestioned. In one respect alone has fault been found with him. His desire to avail himself of every possible aid caused him to procure, often with great difficulty and at great expense, documents, or copies of documents, which had hitherto been inaccessible to the investigator. So far he was acting in the spirit of the truly scientific scholar. But sometimes the very rarity of these new sources led him to attach an undue value to them. Here and there he has followed them as against the more accessible authorities, even when the latter were altogether trustworthy. In this we find something of the passion of the collector; and now and then in minor matters it has led him into error.[48] Thus, in certain passages relating to the voyage of Cortés from Havana, Prescott has misstated the course followed by the pilot, as again with regard to the expedition from Santiago de Cuba[49]; and he errs because he has followed a manuscript copy of Juan Diaz, overlooking the obviously correct and consistent accounts of Bernal Diaz and other standard chroniclers. There are similar though equally unimportant slips elsewhere in his narrative, arising from the same cause. None of them, however, affects the essential accuracy of his text. His masterpiece stands to-day still fundamentally unshaken, a faithful and brilliant panorama of a wonderful episode in history. Those who are inclined to question its veracity do so, not because they can give substantial reasons for their doubt, but because, perhaps, of the romantic colouring which Prescott has infused into his whole narrative, because it is as entertaining as a novel, and because he had the art to transmute the acquisitions of laborious research into an enduring monument of pure literature. CHAPTER IX "THE CONQUEST OF PERU"--"PHILIP II."