University of Virginia Library

21. CHAPTER XXI.

A HISTORY of moral epidemics, drawn up by a philosophic
pen, would add much to our knowledge of
the mysteries of human character and human power,
as well as of the probable contingencies of human
destiny. In the prosecution of such a subject, besides
tracing the development of those little causes which,
in former days, have spread their effects from man to
man, until whole communities have laboured under a
disease resulting in revolutions of the most stupendous
nature, we should, doubtless, perceive many of those
points of susceptibility and chains of impulsion, which
render men the creatures of change; and which,
being definitely understood and wisely influenced,
might at once put it in the power of philanthropists
to govern the operations of reform in such manner as
to avoid the evils of ill-considered innovation. Religion
and liberty have both come to us as diseases;
and the propagation of them throughout the lands of
the heathen and the slave, is yet a measure of pain
and peril, because we have not considered, or not yet
learned, how to address ourselves to infirmity. What
man will not say, that the enthusiasm which cumbered
the sands of Syria with the blood of the Crusaders,
might not, if properly directed, have brought light and
happiness to all Europe? or that the fever, which has
left the revolution of France a horror on the page of
history, might not, under the guidance of a less speculative
philosophy, have covered her valleys and
filled her cities with security and peace? Enthusiasm
comes and goes; and because we know not enough
of its weak and governable qualities to direct it in the
paths of justice and virtue, it is allowed yet to fill the
world with wrong and misery; and, misapplied to the
purposes of glory, avarice, and fanaticism, the engine
which God has given us to advance our civilization,
is still the preserver of barbarism.

In the facility with which the aboriginal empires
of America were subverted by a handful of hotheaded
Spaniards, mankind has been willing to find
a proof of the savage imperfection of their institutions.
In the case of Mexico, at least, this testimony
is deceptive. If we remember that the tribes of
Anahuac, like the other races of America, were
struggling against obstacles which did not impede
the advancement of other nations, we shall be surprised
at the point of civilization they had reached.
Heaven had denied all the useful domestic animals to
America. The bison, which is perhaps not altogether
untameable, roamed only over the prairies and the
forest lands of the north, among tribes that were yet
in the bottom class of humanity. The horse and the
ass added not their strength to the labours of man;
and the little llama, bearing the burden of its master
over the icy Cordilleras of the south, was but a poor
substitute for the camel of the desert, to which it has
been compared. Accident, or the knowledge of a
thousand years, can alone teach men the use of that
metal which will bring him civilization, when gold
will not buy it; but the discovery even of the properties
of iron will soon follow the invention of an alphabet,
however rude or hieroglyphic. The Mexicans
could already record and perpetuate their discoveries.
Without the aid of iron and domestic animals,
they were advancing in refinement. Civilization had
dawned, and was shedding a light, constantly augmenting,
over their valleys; and, apart from these
deficiencies, saving only, perhaps, additionally, in the
article of religion, which was not yet purged of its
abominations, (and which, perhaps, flung more annual
victims on the altars than did, in after days, even the
superstition of their conquerors, in Spain,) the Mexican
empire was not far behind some of the monarchies
of Europe in that method, purpose, and stability
of institutions, both political and domestic, which are
esteemed the evidences of civilization.

A moral epidemic nerved the arm of the invaders;

another paralyzed the strength of the invaded. Superstition
covered the Spaniard with armour stronger
than his iron mail, and left the Mexican naked and
defenceless; and, in addition, the disease of disaffection,
creeping from the extremities to the centre of
the empire, added its weight to the lethargy of religious
fear. When Hernan Cortes set out on his
march, the second time, against Tenochtitlan, believing
that God had chosen him to be a scourge to the
misbeliever, he knew well that thousands and tens of
thousands of malecontents were burning to join his
standard. Mexico was the Rome of the New World,—
a compound of hostile elements, an union of tribes
and states subdued and conjoined by the ambition of
a single city, but not yet so closely cemented as to
defy the shocks of a Gothic irruption. What might
have been the condition of the empire of Montezuma,
if the divine ray which conducted the Genoese pilot
over the Atlantic, had been reserved for an adventurer
of the present day, it is impossible to determine;
but, it is quite clear, its condition was such at the
time of the invasion, that, had not the indecision of
its monarch, founded on such a conjuncture of coincidences
as might have confounded a more enlightened
prince, entirely repressed its powers of resistance, no
armies, raised by the Spanish colonists, or even by
their European master, could have penetrated beyond
the shores; and the destiny of Cortes would have
been written in letters as few and as obscure as those
which have recorded the fate of Valdivia among the
less refined, but better united Araucanians of Chili.

The heart of the leader was bold, the spirits of his
confederates full of resolution and hope; and notwithstanding
the evil intelligence that their victims were
wakening to a knowledge of their strength, and confirming
their audacity in the blood they had already
shed, the united followers of Narvaez and Hernan
Cortes began their march over the mountains with
alacrity and joy.

The novelties and wonders that were each day disclosed,

were remarked by no one with more satisfaction
than by Don Amador de Leste. He rejoiced
when, ascending among the mountains, the fens and
sandhills of the coast were exchanged for picturesque
lakes and romantic crags; when the oak woods and
pine forests began to stretch their verdant carpets
over the hill-sides; when, standing among the colossal
ruins of some shivered peak, he cast his eye
over glen and valley, glittering with verdure and fertility,
far away to the majestic ridges over whose
hazy sides tumbled the foamy fall, or crept the lazy
cloud, while among their gorges glistened the distant
cones of snow. Now he admired the ferns, lifting
their arborescent heads, like palms, among other
strange trees; now, as he exchanged the luxuriant
slopes for those volcanic deserts which strew the
base of Perote with lava and cinders, he beheld the
broad nopal, and the gigantic maguey, rearing their
massive leaves over the fissures, while a scorched
forest withered and rotted above. Sometimes, while
pursuing his weary way over these mountain paramos,
or deserts, he advanced bewildered, as what
seemed a fair and spacious lake withdrew its vapoury
waters from before him, and revealed a parched
and barren expanse of sand. The journey was
an alternation of mountain and valley, forest and
plain, with sometimes a pleasant little Indian village,
and, twice or thrice, a town of no mean magnitude
and splendour, rising in pleasant nooks among the
horrors of the waste.

Over this rugged region it was not possible to drag
the ordnance and heavy stores, with which Cortes
was now abundantly provided, without much labour
and delay; and it was not until about the time of the
summer solstice, more than a month after the fall of
Zempoala, that, at the close of a pleasant day, the
new invaders laid their eyes, for the first time, on
Tlascala,—the capital of that warlike republic, which,
for the singular object, as certain historians have
conjectured, of preserving an enemy to exercise their

armies, as well as to furnish victims for their gods,
the Mexican monarchs permitted to subsist in the
heart of their empire.

The slowness of their march was productive of
many advantages to those particular individuals,
whose adventures it is the object of this history to
record. It gave to Don Amador an opportunity to
make the acquaintance of many of his new companions,
among whom were some not unworthy his
friendship. The services of the señor Duero were
remembered not without gratitude; and although he
reflected, at times, with some unreasonable disgust,
that these denoted as much treachery to a friend as
humanity to a stranger, the attentions of that cavalier
were so sedulously continued, that he could not well
refuse him his regard. The taciturn but ever-resolute
Sandoval,—the lofty and savage, but not the less
courteous De Leon,—the fiery De Olid,—the daring
De Ordaz, who, thirsting to accomplish exploits not
dreamed of by his confederates, had clambered among
the snowy pinnacles and burning caverns of the great
Volcan, and had thereby won the right, confirmed to
him afterwards by the Spanish king, to carry a fire-mountain
for his arms;—these, as well as divers
others of no mean renown, so recommended themselves
to the esteem of the neophyte, that he dismissed
much of his preconceived contempt, and began
to consider himself among honourable and estimable
cavaliers. But to none of them did his spirit turn
with so much confidence and affection as to Don
Francisco de Morla, a young hidalgo of his own native
town, greatly beloved throughout the army, as a
man of honour and tried courage. In this cavalier,
a modest carriage was united to great gayety of disposition,
and a warm heart, governed by gentleness
of temper. A milder enthusiasm than that which beset
his comrades, softened him to the barbarians, in
whose land he was more desirous to consider himself
a guest than an enemy; and without lacking
any sincerity of devotion to his own faith, he seemed

to regard the ferocious superstitions of the natives
with less abhorrence than pity. He had followed at
the side of Cortes from Tobasco to Zempoala; and,
being as observant as brave, was not only able to acquaint
Don Amador with the marvellous events of
the invasion,—its perils, sufferings, and triumphs,—
but could also instruct him in many of the remarkable
characteristics of the land and the people.

The effects of this delay on the knight of Rhodes
were equally beneficial, though differently wrought.
The paroxysms of lethargy, as well as the fits of distraction,
which, as Don Amador learned from the
faithful Marco, had been many and ungovernable,
whenever the excitement of battle was over, began
to vanish under the interest of the society, and the influence
of the careful government of the neophyte;
who, from long acquaintance with his kinsman's eccentricities,
had acquired a power to soothe them.
But if such was the influence of Don Amador, the
power of the little Moorish page over his moody moments
was still more remarkable. The sorrows of
Jacinto vanished with the capriciousness of childhood;
and perceiving that, in the long and toilsome march,
he was never so far separated from his father that
he might not look to see him at night-fall, he quickly
recovered his spirits. Then, as if to express his gratitude
to the good knight who protected him, he studied,
with wonderful diligence and address, how best
to please and divert him. With a thousand pretty
stories, chosen with such discretion and prattled with
such eloquence, as often surprised the neophyte;—
with countless songs, which no one could sing with
more sweetness, or accompany with more skill on
the lute,—he would seduce the knight from his gloom,
and cheat him out of his melancholy. No dagger
shone so brightly as that polished by the hand of Jacinto;
no plume of feathers waved with more grace
than that set by the young Moor on the casque of
Don Gabriel. If a tiger-flower glittered on the path,
if a chirimoya put forth its fruit by the way-side, before

the knight could turn his eyes upon them, they
were in his hand; and Jacinto smiled with delight, as
he received the thanks of his patron. The benevolence
of Don Gabriel soon changed to affection; he
almost smiled—not so much with joy as with love—
when, sometimes, the boy sat at his feet at evening,
and sang with fervour a hymn to the Virgin; he was
troubled if, by chance, Jacinto strayed from his sight;
and Don Amador sometimes found himself beset by
a sort of jealousy, when he perceived, or thought he
perceived, this stripling robbing him of the heart of
his kinsman. But to do Don Amador justice, it
needed not many suggestions of his honour or pride
to rid him of such envious emotions. The zeal of
the boy in the service of Calavar, as he confessed,
deserved much of his own gratitude; to which should
be added many acknowledgements of the satisfaction
with which he himself listened to his instrument and
voice. If the boy sang with alacrity at the wish of
Calavar, he was not less ready to obey the command
of the neophyte. Nevertheless, Don Amador fancied
this obedience was rendered less from love than duty:
he thought the stripling looked on him with fear,
sometimes with dislike; and he was persuaded that
(though on occasions of difficulty,—when a thunderstorm
met them on a hill, or a torrent roared over
the path,—Jacinto chose rather to fly to him for protection,
than to remain by the side of the knight,) he
was oftener disposed to shrink from his kindness.
This troubled Don Amador, for he loved the boy
well; and often he said to himself, “I have saved
this urchin from a beating, and, as I may add, from
the imminent danger of being speared like a frog;—
I have given him gentle words, as also praises for his
singing, which is indeed very excellent; I have helped
him over divers rivers, and a thousand times offered
him a seat on Fogoso's crupper, which it was his
own fault, or his own cowardice, he did not accept;
in short, I have helped him out of countless troubles,
and was, besides, the first to befriend him in these
lands,—without reckoning what protection I have
given to his father, Sidi Abdalla;—and yet the lad
loves me not. It is a pity he was not born of Christian
parents;—ingratitude runs in Moorish blood!”

So thought Don Amador, a thousand times; but a
thousand times, as his displeasure waxed hot at the
unthankfulness of the lad, it was dissipated by some
little circumstance or another. Once, when he was
in a talkative mood, and desirous to have Jacinto at
his side, he was so displeased at his evident wish to
escape, as to vent his displeasure in a reprimand.
The boy ran to his side, kissed his hand, and raised
his eyes, suffused with tears, to the countenance of his
preserver.—The cavalier never rebuked him again.
On two or three occasions, also, greatly to his surprise,
he caught the stripling weeping; which was
the more wonderful, since he seemed not only reconciled,
but greatly pleased with his state of easy servitude.
On all such occasions, he excused himself
with such persuasive simplicity, as not only to remove
all suspicions of discontent, but greatly to increase
the affection of the neophyte. He was a favourite
as well with the men-at-arms, as with their
masters; and Don Amador often reflected with wonder,
how quickly he had wound himself into the hearts
of all. “If I could persuade myself into a belief of
magic,” he pondered, “I should think him a truer
conjurer than Botello. What Botello prophesied concerning
Narvaez, is very remarkable; yet, when a
man is prognosticating all his life, it is hard if he do
not sometimes blunder upon the truth. Truly he
blundered wrong about Lorenzo's arm, which is not
yet well healed; and I vow to St. John, I thought,
one time, it would have gangrened. But as to Jacinto,
he has enchanted my knight's heart. I have
ever thought he abhorred the Moors, and surely he
slew great numbers in the war of the Alpujarras. As
for myself, I was born with a natural detestation of
the Moorish race; and I never before knew but one
that I did not hate at first sight.” Here he sighed

dolefully. “But this boy I love; yet loves he not me.
—I have heard of philters and love-medicines; and
surely, as many drugs attack the stomach, brain, and
other parts, there is no reason some should not be
found to affect the heart!”

But while the neophyte thus marvelled and reasoned,
Jacinto stole still deeper into his favour; and at
the end of a day's march, Don Amador was oftener
found sitting at the door of some Indian cabin, or under
the shade of its flower-garden, listening with Calavar
to the lays of the young musician, than sharing
the martial sports of his companions, or even
superintending the warlike exercises of his ward, Fabueno.