CHAPTER VI. LAS CASAS AND HIS MONKS OFFER TO CONQUER THE LAND OF THEY MAKE THEIR PREPARATIONS FOR THE ENTER WAR. DISCOVERY TO THE NORTH OF MEXICO.-DEATH OF ALVARADO, WAR" IS CALLED (C THE LAND OF PEACE."-THE FINAL LABORS AND DEATH OF DOMINGO DE BETANZOS. CHAPTER I. IMPORTANCE OF THE HISTORY OF GUATEMALA.-EMBASSIES TO CORTEZ AFTER THE SIEGE OF MEXICO. HIS DISCOVERY OF THE SEA OF THE SOUTH.-ORIGIN OF THE KINGDOM OF GUATEMALA.-LAWS AND CUSTOMS OF THAT COUNTRY.—EXPEDITION AGAINST GUATEMALA PREPARED. IT T must often have been felt that the narrative of the Spanish Conquest, whether told in strict order of time, or made to conform itself to place, was inconveniently scattered, and that it is occasionally difficult to maintain a clear view of the main drift and current of the story. Now, however, as in the closing act of a well-constructed drama, the principal events make themselves felt; the principal personages reappear together on the scene; and the threads of many persons' fortunes are found to lead up to some unity in time and place. This felicitous conjunction does not often happen in real life; but, at the particular point of the narrative which we have now to consider, something of the kind undoubtedly did occur. In the decade of years that followed after the conquest of Mexico, the spot where some of the most important conquests were completed and the greatest expeditions prepared, where the strangest experiments were made for the conversion of the natives, where the discovery took place of the most remarkable monuments of American civilization, and the theatre wherein was acted that series of events which led to the greatest changes in Spanish legislation for the Indies, was the province of Guate 220 Discovery of Guatemala. mala. The wars in this province, though very considerable, were not of the first magnitude or interest; and as, in the early periods of historical writing, wars are the main staple of history, the other events in this part of the world, not being illustrated by great wars, have escaped due notice. Hence the majority even of studious men are probably not aware of the important circumstances in the history of America with which this narrow strip of territory, called Guatemala, is connected. Without further prelude, I propose to narrate in detail the events which led to the discovery, the conquest, and the pacification of Guatemala. Cortez was a man of insatiable activity. It might have been thought that, after the conquest of Mexico, the rebuilding and repeopling of the city would have sufficiently exhausted the energies even of that active man. But it was not so. He is chiefly known to the world by that conquest of Mexico which, for its audacity, stands unrivaled in the annals of mankind; but he was subsequently employed in further conquests, which cost him far more labor and suffering, but have hardly added at all to his renown, so little time and thought can men spare for a thorough investigation of the lives and deeds of even their most remarkable fellow-men. Almost in the next page of his third letter to the Emperor, after that in which he describes the siege and capture of Mexico, Cortez begins to inform his majesty what steps he has taken for the discovery of that which he calls "the other Sea of the South.' After the last discharge of the cannon of Cortez had been made upon the helpless but unyielding crowd of Effect of the Fall of Mexico. 221 Mexico, the news of the city's fall was not slow in reaching the adjacent territories. Along the glad shores of the lakes, up the vast rocky basin in which those glistening waters and the gemlike cities were set, through the defiles of the mountains, down the rivers, across the great plateau, from the eastern to the western sea, southward to powerful Utatlan, and northward to virgin California, sped the news. The citizens of well-ordered states communed together upon the fate of the greatest of cities known to them. The traveling merchant told the tale, not unembellished, to his wondering auditors. The wandering huntsman, sitting at night by his watch-fire, held entranced the keen, bright eyes of other wanderers from scattered and distant tribes, while he related to them new and unimagined feats of arms performed by bearded men and animals unknown in their prairies. All central America must soon have been aware that their "Babylon the Great had fallen." And how did the listeners receive the astonishing news? With joy, regret, and apprehension: joy, that a ruthless enemy, to whose fell gods their young men and their maidens had been sacrificed, was now no more; regret, that they, the injured, had had no part in the misfortunes of the detested city; and apprehension, lest a worse thing should come upon them than even the of the hateful Aztecs. A dead enemy power is soon forgotten. The most gigantic fear leaves but little trace behind. A huge idol, once cast down from its pedestal, or a fallen minister of tyranny dragged ignominiously through the streets, is reviled, cursed, stamped upon to-day, and buried in oblivion to-morTOW. Past terrors live again only in men's dreams. 222 Effect of the Fall of Mexico. All that the neighboring nations had suffered from the hideous Aztec gods would be forgotten in the new terror, which, like Aaron's rod, had devoured the puny enchantments of false magicians. The fall of Mexico must have produced an impression on the chiefs of the neighboring states far greater than that which would have been felt throughout Germany at the defeat of an emperor by a foreign enemy; or throughout France, in the early days of French sovereignty over many provinces, at a similar defeat of their lord paramount, the French monarch; or throughout Christendom at the capture by the Moslem of imperial Constantinople. Indeed, the defeat of the dwellers in the New World by those from the Old was not, in its first aspect, like the defeat of men by men; but it seemed as if that ancient giant race, the children of women by the sons of gods, not immersed by any deluge, but for ages safely dwelling amid the mountains of the Caucasus, and hitherto lapped in a sublime indifference to human concerns, had now, obeying some wild, mysterious impulse, burst out upon the miserable descendants of mere men and women. These new beings might be tutelar divinities, might be destroying angels; but there was no doubt that they came forth, clothed in what seemed celestial panoply, "conquering and to conquer." The Indian kings who were opposed to the Mexican dynasty, no less than those who were allied to it, shuddered at the success of these awful invaders from another sphere. The first potentate who sent embassadors to Cortez was the King of Mechoacan, a province about seventy leagues to the southwest of Mexico. From these embassadors, Cortez, who had already |