Mexico | Page 7

most suitable name for this
country would be New Spain, and thus, in the name of your Majesty, I
have christened it. I humbly supplicate your Majesty to approve of this
and order that it be so called." Thus wrote Hernan Cortes, the greatest
natural leader of men since Julius Caesar, to the sovereign whom he
endowed, as he subsequently told him bitterly, with provinces more
numerous than the cities he had inherited from his forefathers. From the
first appearance of the Spaniards upon the vast elevated plateau upon
which the Aztec empire stood the invaders were struck by its
resemblance in climate and natural products to their European
homeland. In his first letter to the Emperor Cortes wrote: "The sea
coast is low, with many sandhills.... The country beyond these sandhills
is level with many fertile plains, in which are such beautiful river banks

that in all Spain there can be found no better. These are as grateful to
the view as they are productive in everything sown in them, and very
orderly and well kept with roads and convenience for pasturing all sorts
of cattle. There is every kind of game in this country, and animals and
birds such as are familiar to us at home.... So that there is no difference
between this country and Spain as regards birds and animals....
According to our judgment it is credible that there is everything in this
country which existed in that from whence Solomon is said to have
brought the gold for the Temple."
Here, for the first time, the Spanish explorers in their wanderings had
come across an organised nation with an advanced civilisation and
polity of its own. The gentle savages they had encountered in the
tropical islands and the mainland of the isthmus had offered little or no
resistance to the white men or to their uncomprehended God. The little
kinglets of Hispaniola, of Cuba, and of Darien, divided, unsophisticated,
and wonder-stricken, with their peoples bent their necks to the yoke
and their backs to the lash almost without a struggle. Their moist
tropical lands, near the coasts, were enervating, and no united
organisation for defence against the enslaving intruders was possible to
them. But here in the land of the Aztec federation three potent states,
with vast dependencies from which countless hordes of warriors might
be drawn, were ready to stand shoulder to shoulder and resist the claims
of the white demi-gods, mounted on strange beasts, who came upon
giant sea-birds from the unknown, beyond the waste of waters. But the
fatal prophecy of the coming of the avenging white God Quetzalcoatl to
destroy the Aztec power paralysed the arm and brain of Montezuma,
and rendered him, and finally his people, a prey to the diplomacy, the
daring, and the valour of Cortes, aided by the dissentient tribes he
enlisted under his banner.
The vast amphibious city of Tenochtitlan, when at length the
Conquerors reached it, confirmed the impression that the land of which
it was the capital was another wider and richer Spain. Its teeming
markets, "one square twice as large as that of Salamanca, all
surrounded by arcades, where there are daily more than sixty thousand
souls buying and selling"; the abundance of food and articles of

advanced comfort and luxury, "the cherries and plums like those of
Spain"; "the skeins of different kinds of spun silk in all colours, that
might be from one of the markets of Granada"; "the porters such as in
Castile do carry burdens"; the great temple, of which "no human tongue
is able to describe the greatness and beauty ... the principal tower of
which is higher than the great tower of Seville Cathedral"--all reminded
Cortes of his native Spain. "I will only say of this city," he concludes,
"that in the service and manners of its people their fashion of living is
almost the same as in Spain, with just as much harmony and order; and
considering that these people were barbarous, so cut off from the
knowledge of God and of other civilised people, it is marvellous to see
to what they have attained in every respect." Thus New Spain was
marked out of all the dominions of Spanish Indies as that which was in
closest relationship with the mother country.
The conquest and subjection of New Spain synchronised curiously with
the profound crisis in, and the conquest and domination of, Old Spain
by its own king, a governing genius and leader of men almost as great
as was the obscure Estramaduran squireling who was adding to the
newly unified crown of Spain that which was to be its richest jewel in
the West. When Cortes penned his first letter to the future Emperor and
his mad mother in July, 1519, telling them of the new found