Though there is no typical Aztec woman to present as representative of her sex and country, there is one whose name is so welded with the history of the fall of the Aztec power that a brief sketch of her story may be given here. She was of Mexican birth, but had been sold by her unprincipled mother as a slave, the mother thereby securing for her son by a second marriage the estate which would otherwise have fallen to the girl. When Cortés reached his first harbor on his road to Tenochtitlan, as the Aztec capital was called, the cacique of Tabasco presented him with several slaves, among whom was this girl, called by the Spaniards Doña Marina, and by the Mexicans Malinche. She was of great beauty and of a high degree of intelligence, and she soon came within the notice of Cortés by acting as interpreter for him when he was embarrassed by his inability to communicate with the Aztec embassy. She did not at that time speak Spanish, but she managed to interpret through an intermediary, and she soon became proficient in the language of the men with whom her lot was now thrown, from one of whom she learned more than the Castilian tongue. The beauty of the young girl, whose charms are said by Spanish writers to have been extraordinary, soon captivated the heart of Cortés, and he first made her his secretary and then his mistress. At least so the fashion of our time would term her, but there can be little doubt that in the eyes of Marina, reared amid traditions of polygamy, there was nothing of wrong in her union with Cortés, and it may be noted that such a good and moral man as Father Olmedo had for her no word of reproof but rather of blessing. At all events, she openly lived with Cortés as his wife and by him had a son, Don Martin Cortés, acknowledged by his father, and who afterward became comendador of the Military Order of Saint lago.