Hero Tales from History

which proved him to be also a wise statesman and law-giver.

The kings and nobles of Europe always hated Napoleon. They said he was vulgar, and called him “the Corsican upstart.” But the French people loved him as one of themselves. No general or emperor ever had more devoted followers than Napoleon Bonaparte. Millions of men gave their lives willingly to fight his battles. He waged war after war till there were but few fighting men left in France. Then the people began to think that Napoleon loved them because they could help him win victories to give him more power and fulfill his high ambition. They began to say among themselves, “He is sacrificing us for his own glory.” While at the height of his power, Napoleon exclaimed, “What are a million lives to a man like me!”

When the people lost their faith in him, Napoleon began to lose instead of win his battles. Generals and nobles stopped flattering him and began to fight him. His own brothers and sisters, whom he had made kings and queens, deserted him. Even his wife forsook him, taking with her his only son, the idol of his heart.

Napoleon’s last battle was at Waterloo, in Belgium. Because this loss brought ruin to him, the name of the place became a kind of proverb. When overwhelming defeat comes to a great man, people say, “He has met his Waterloo!”

The conquered conqueror was taken prisoner and sent thousands of miles away as a captive to the bleak island of St. Helena. He made the best of his hard lot as “the fortunes of war.” But the years of loneliness endured by this friendless conqueror, who all his life had been selfish and merciless, are suggested by a well-known picture, which shows Napoleon on the shore of that far-off rock in the southern sea, standing with hands clasped behind him, looking off across the ocean to where France lay.

NELSON, THE HERO OF TRAFALGAR

Thus young Horatio Nelson entered the Royal Navy. One of his first trips was as coxswain on a voyage to the Arctic regions. While dragging the ship’s boats over the ice, the sailors had to fight with walruses and polar bears. Coxswain Nelson killed a big white bear and carried home the skin for his father.

When Horatio was fifteen he made a voyage on the warship Seahorse to the East Indies. A year and a half in that hot climate made the frail lad so ill that he had to go home. Of his thoughts while sailing home on sick leave he once said:

“After a long and gloomy revery in which I almost wished myself overboard, a sudden glow of patriotism was kindled within me and presented my king and country as my patrons. My mind exulted in the idea. ‘Well then,’ I exclaimed, ‘I will be a hero, and trusting in God, I will brave every danger.’ ”

Young Nelson had too much pluck to be sick long. England was then at war with France and Spain, and he fought his country’s enemies in malarial regions where hundreds of his fellows died from the poisoned air and serpent bites. When Horatio was twenty-two his health again failed, and he had to spend months in Brighton to recover it.

When peace was signed between England and France, in 1783, Nelson was twenty-five. He was presented at court in that year, as he was a favorite with the Duke of Clarence who afterward became King William the Fourth.

The next year Captain Nelson was placed in command of the battle-ship Boreas. He was very kind to the thirty midshipmen on board. When a boy was afraid to climb a mast, Nelson would say to him with a winning smile:

“I am going to race to the masthead and beg that I may meet you there.”

Once when he was invited to dinner with the governor of Barbadoes, Nelson said, “Your Excellency must excuse me for bringing one of my midshipmen. I make it a rule to introduce them to all the good company I can, as they have few to look up to besides myself while they are at sea.”

It is not surprising that men under his command exclaimed, in comparing him with other men, “Nelson was the man to love!”

The wars of Great Britain with Napoleon kept the young navy officer in active service. During a siege a shell burst and destroyed the sight of his right eye. In another attack he was wounded in the arm. He shouted to those who wished to remove him from the fray,

“Let me alone; I have yet my legs and one arm. Tell the surgeon to make haste and get the instruments. I know I must lose my right arm; so the sooner it is off, the better.”

In 1798, when Napoleon started out with the French fleet for an unknown port, to surprise and lay waste the countries of people friendly to Great Britain, these instructions were issued to Admiral Nelson: “Take, sink, burn, and destroy the French fleet.” With his battleships Nelson set out to search the Mediterranean, but for a long time he was unable to find the French fleet. At last it was found at anchor in Aboukir Bay at the mouth of the Nile. The French were caught in a trap. Though Nelson had not eaten or slept much for many days and nights, he invited his officers to dinner on his flagship, the Vanguard, to discuss the coming battle. “If we succeed, what will the world say?” asked one of the officers.

“There is no ‘if’ in the case,” replied the admiral sharply. “We are sure to succeed, but who may live to tell the story is a very different question.”

Admiral Nelson had the colors flying from six different places on his flagship when they went into battle that very night. That engagement, now known as the battle of the Nile, was one of the greatest naval combats in history. The French flagship, L’Orient, on which Napoleon had sailed to carry war into Egypt, was blown up and the French admiral killed with all on board. The battle raged from seven in the evening until three in the morning. Though the French had thousands more men than the British, most of them were killed. Nelson sent boats to rescue them from the burning French ships, but they preferred to go on fighting through the flames, amidst bursting shells and exploding powder magazines.

Napoleon’s fleet was utterly destroyed. Nelson wrote of that night’s work:

“Victory is not a name strong enough for such a scene; it is a conquest.”

The whole world, which had suffered in dread of “that monster, Napoleon,” went wild over the news. England made Nelson a baron and voted him a pension of ten thousand dollars a year. Other nations, rulers, and corporations showered upon him great sums of money, gold boxes filled with diamonds, jeweled swords, and gem-incrusted souvenirs. The Queen of Naples, a sister of Queen Marie Antoinette, who had lately been beheaded by the French people, was beside herself with joy. The poor people of Italy expressed their gratitude when Nelson’s fleet was anchored in the bay of Naples. Bringing cages of birds to the shore, they opened the doors and let the birds out to fly about the flagship and light on the beloved admiral’s shoulders.

Three years later the conquering hero was called to strike another blow against Napoleon near Copenhagen, Denmark. Admiral Nelson opened the attack on the allied fleet, but the admiral higher in command, thinking it might be well to give Nelson a chance to withdraw a little, signaled him to retire to repair several disabled ships. Nelson, hearing of this, put his spyglass to his blind eye and winked as he said: “I really do not see the signal. Keep on flying mine for ‘closer battle.’ That’s the way I answer such signals!”

The men of both fleets fought with undaunted courage for five long, terrible hours. The enemy lost 1800 men and 6000 prisoners, but the British had only 250 killed, and 680 wounded. Of the Battle of Copenhagen, Nelson wrote:

“I have been in one hundred and five engagements, but this has been the most terrible of all.”

For the victory at Copenhagen Nelson was made a viscount. But there was no time for celebrations after this, for Napoleon was now waging war to the death. Lord Nelson seemed to realize that the next fight must be the end either of France or of England. At last the great day came, off Cape Trafalgar, Spain, on the 21st of October, 1805. It is told of Admiral Lord Nelson that as he walked the deck of his flagship, Victory, that morning, his knees trembled more with excitement than fear. The one-eyed, one-armed hero looked down and shook his fist at his legs, saying: “Shake away, there! You would shake worse than that if you knew where I’m going to take you to-day.” Then he gave the order for that immortal signal: “ENGLAND EXPECTS EVERY MAN TO DO HIS DUTY.” Trafalgar was the greatest of all Nelson’s victories. It broke the power of Napoleon and paved the way for Wellington at Waterloo.

At a shot from the mizzenmast of a French ship, the Lord Admiral fell. Captain Hardy of the Victory knelt beside him.

“They have done for me at last, Hardy,” he gasped.

Nelson lived for hours, giving his last directions, then died in the moment of his greatest triumph.

“Now I am satisfied,” were his last words. “Thank God, I have done my duty.”

DISCOVERERS AND EXPLORERS

COLUMBUS, THE MAP-MAKER WHO FOUND A NEW WORLD

There were pirates, or highway-robbers of the sea, in those days. Little Christopher was sure to hear thrilling stories of how they fought hand-to-hand with sabers and axes, and of how the wicked but powerful pirates murdered the men on merchant ships and carried off the women and children to be slaves in distant lands. Young Columbus seems to have been fired with a boyish longing for—

for the next that is known of him is that he narrowly escaped from drowning in a shipwreck by swimming six miles to shore on a boat oar.

He landed near a town in Portugal and soon found work in a map-maker’s shop. Here he had a chance to learn all the geography that was known four hundred years ago. Most of the maps he made were drawn as if the world were flat. But there were curious charts with lands and seas outlined on the six sides of a cube, and others drawn as if the world were shaped like a huge section of stovepipe. Young Columbus found the maps very interesting; but what seemed most wonderful of all was the idea that the world was round, as every child now knows.

In those days a man was not allowed to believe anything different from what every one else thought. So when young Columbus began to claim that the earth was round, people laughed at him. They thought he was crazy. Of course, a few astronomers and scientists knew how to prove the roundness of the earth by the shadow it casts on the moon in an eclipse, but most of the people could not understand such things. Columbus himself could notice that the surface of the ocean, within the short distance he could see, was slightly curved. He resolved to miss no chance to prove his theory, by learning all he could about newly-found lands; and he even began planning to sail around the earth to India and Far Cathay, as China was called in the old days.

Travelers had been overland to the Far East and back. Daring sailors had sailed along the coast of Africa. But the great body of water to the west of Portugal was called the Sea of Darkness. People believed that terrible sea-monsters haunted its dark waters, and that if men were to sail far enough westward, their ship would go beyond the brink of the world, as over a giant waterfall, and fall down, down through space forever.

So when Christopher Columbus tried to persuade the king of Portugal and the princes of other countries to fit out a few ships and let him prove the roundness of the earth by sailing west to the Far East, no one would listen to him seriously. But the poor man could not give it up, though he spent many years wandering from country to country to persuade some one rich and powerful enough to supply the ships and men for such a dangerous voyage. Queen Isabella of Spain and her husband, King Ferdinand, listened to him, but when the matter was referred to the royal council, those grave men shook their heads and said such a thing was absurd and unfit for a queen even to think about.

Columbus was in despair. His wife was now dead and he had his little son Diego with him. The two were tramping across the country and came, about sunset, to a monastery on the border of Spain, where the boy asked for a drink just as the monk in charge happened to be passing. This monk spoke to Columbus and, seeing what an interesting man he was, invited the strangers in. Columbus told his strange, sad story. This monk had been a friend and adviser to Queen Isabella. Also he knew two sailors who might be a help in such an undertaking. He wrote at once to the queen, urging her to let Columbus come and talk

over the matter once more. She wrote back that she would like to hear what her friend the monk might have to say about it. He started the very night he received the queen’s letter, and talked with her about converting to the Christian faith the people of the new lands Columbus might discover. As a result of this talk the good monk wrote to Columbus who, with his young son, was waiting at the monastery:

The queen received Columbus this time with sympathy and kindness. She is said to have pledged her jewels to raise money enough to fit out three ships for his great voyage. Columbus was to command one of these and the monk’s friends were to be captains of the other two. But after making the little fleet ready, they could not induce sailors to man the vessels for their ghastly voyage across the Sea of Outer Darkness. Sailors were always superstitious. Even to-day they will not start out on Friday, and many seafaring men will refuse to sail with a ship if the flag should happen to be raised “union down,” or wrong side up, no matter how quickly it may be set right. At last Columbus had to take convicts out of prison and condemn them to hard labor as sailors for the terrible trial trip. Some of these men were desperate criminals.

The unknown western sea was far wider than Columbus had thought. This showed that the world must be much larger than he supposed. As they sailed on and on, day after day and week after week, across the untraveled sea, the superstitious convict-sailors were half-dead with fear. They planned to murder the Admiral, as Columbus was now called, and his two captains, in order to turn the ship about and go back before they were engulfed in some great whirlpool of disaster. Columbus kept himself well guarded, and coaxed and flattered the frightened creatures, promising them all kinds of wealth and pleasures if they would only keep on a day or two longer. He offered an extra prize to the man who first caught sight of land.

On the night of the 11th of October, 1492, one of the sailors saw a glimmering light to the west. On the morning of the 12th, the Admiral was an early riser. There lay a tropical island, with “gardens of the most beautiful trees I ever saw,” he said afterward. The sea was as deep blue as that along the shores of his native Italy. He and his two captains went ashore, with well-armed men in boats from all three ships. The water was clear and the bottom was white with sand and shells, while strange, bright fish darted about as they paddled along. On the island were parrots and other birds of gay plumage flitting from tree to tree as if startled by the coming of the first white men into their world. Columbus did not need his armed soldiers. After looking a long while he saw naked red men peering at them from behind the strange, tropical plants. After he made signs of friendship, the natives were no longer afraid.

Christopher Columbus was first to set foot on the new-found shore. Falling on his knees, his eyes filled with tears of joy, he bowed his face and kissed the sand of the new world. The happy company repeated prayers and sang a hymn of praise. The naked natives looked on with wonder to see the leader, who was dressed in rich red velvet, set up a red, white, and gold banner—the combined flag of Ferdinand and Isabella—and go through a long ceremony. They did not know that those white strangers were claiming the country in the name of a king and queen far across the sea. Columbus named this island—one of the group now called Bahamas—San Salvador, or Holy Saviour. He still thought he had reached the Far East.

Admiral Columbus returned to Spain to report upon his reaching eastern India by sailing west. With him went ten of the red men he had found, whom he called Indians. He made several voyages after that—only once landing on the continent of South America. Some of his Spanish followers were jealous of their Italian Admiral, and Columbus died in a prison in Spain, after all he had done for that country, without even knowing that it was America, not India, that he had discovered.

MAGELLAN, THE MAN OF THE STRAITS

Portugal, though a small country, was the home of many men of great energy and daring. A Portuguese explorer, Vasco da Gama, had sailed around the Cape of Good Hope, at the southern point of Africa, and discovered that way to India and the Moluccas, or Spice Islands. On these voyages the Portuguese had landed, traded, and taken possession of important parts of Africa. Others had followed in the wake of Columbus, discovering and claiming vast regions in South America.

So young Magellan formed a partnership with another adventurer and started out on voyages of discovery. For nearly ten years he journeyed to and fro between his little homeland and various points in East Africa, India, the Malay Peninsula, and the islands beyond. Frequently he had to fight battles with savage native tribes. In one battle he received a wound that made him lame for life.

When Magellan came home, he suggested to the king of Portugal that it would be a great thing for Portugal if a passage across or around America could be discovered, which would shorten the distance, time, and expense of going from Europe to the Spice Islands. He hoped the king would equip a fleet for such a voyage of discovery; but the king refused, and he set out for Spain to get help for his great undertaking.

At this time he received a letter from a friend who had settled in the Spice Islands, saying that he had “discovered another new world, larger than that found by Vasco da Gama.” Magellan wrote to this friend that he would soon be visiting those islands himself—“If not by way of Portugal, then by way of Spain.”

After a long wait, the Spanish king consented to furnish five ships with two hundred and thirty-four officers and sailors, and to stock them with provisions to last through a two-year voyage. It was agreed also that Magellan and his partner should receive one-twentieth of the profits of their undertaking; and that they should be governors of the islands they discovered.

At last, after two long years of waiting, Magellan’s fleet was ready to sail. Crossing the Atlantic seemed an easy matter then—twenty-seven years after the first voyage of Columbus. The first land they reached was the mainland of South America. The natives along the northern coast were friendly and ready to exchange enough fish for ten men for a looking-glass, a bushel of sweet potatoes for a bell, and several fowls (or even one of their own children) for a butcher-knife. Those people lived in huts and went almost naked, except for aprons of parrots’ feathers. There were many birds of bright plumage and plenty of monkeys in those regions. Some of the natives were cannibals, cooking and eating the flesh of men they captured or killed in battle.

The little Spanish fleet coasted along toward the south. The wide mouth of the La Plata deceived them so that they sailed in until they found that it was only a river. As they drew nearer to the South Pole it grew intensely cold. The men on the ships begged Magellan to turn round and go home. Some of their number died of exposure and want, and the rest were afraid they could not live through such a winter. Not only did they suffer from the bitter cold, but their ships had been damaged by storms on the way down the coast.

They stayed several weeks at a port in the country now called Patagonia without seeing a person. But one day an Indian giant strode in upon them. He was so tall that the white men’s heads barely came up to his waist. His hair was dyed white, his face colored red, and he had painted wide yellow circles around his little, black eyes. When they let him see himself in a big steel mirror he was so astonished that he jumped backward and knocked down four of the Spaniards standing around him. When he understood that it was himself he saw in the looking-glass, he was pleased and they made him a present of a small metal mirror. They found the Patagonians to be savages of a very low and brutal type, who ate raw meat, and even rats, like beasts of prey. If they felt sick they stuck arrows down their throats, and gashed their foreheads with shell-knives when their heads ached.

Many of Magellan’s men now turned against him, planning to murder him and those who stood by him, and then to sail back to Spain. Though they were the larger number the energetic ship master beat them at their own game. He executed one ringleader, and sailed away leaving another rebel on the shore, where he was, no doubt, soon killed and eaten by the cannibals.

As July and August are the coldest months near the South Pole, the weather began to moderate in October, which is a spring month. January and February are the hot season in that climate. On the 21st of October, 1520, they “saw an opening like unto a bay,” and after sailing through its winding ways they found to their great joy, that it led out at the other end into a vast expanse of water. At last they had discovered the only natural passage from sea to sea through the American continents.

Some of their ships had been lost and their provisions were eaten. Most of the men begged to turn back, now that they could report that they had found a great ocean beyond South America. “No one knows,” they said, “how wide this open sea is, and we may all starve before we reach the Moluccas.”

But Ferdinand Magellan would not turn back. He accused them of having faint hearts, and said that even if they had to eat the leather on the ships’ yards he would still go on and discover what he had promised the King of Spain.

One dark night the commander of the largest ship deserted the others and went back to Spain with the greater part of their provisions. The other ships were thirty-eight days winding their way through the straits to which the great leader’s name was afterward given, the Straits of Magellan. They saw so many fires in the land away to the south of them that they named it Terra del Fuego—Land of Fire.

Brave Magellan’s threat had to be carried out. All their provisions had either been eaten or were wholly unfit to eat. So all they had to live on for a long time was the leather on the ships’ yards. They hung it over the sides of the ship to soak several days in the salt water as they sailed along. Then they cooked it over a coal fire. The wide sea they were now crossing was so free from storms that Magellan named it the Pacific Ocean.

After three months of hunger and thirst, risking their lives in their devotion to leader and country, they discovered a group of islands now named the Marianne or Ladrone Islands. Here they enjoyed the luscious fruits and reveled in plenty of fresh water to drink. From the Ladrones they sailed on and discovered the Philippines, where the natives were friendly and brought them coconuts, oranges, bananas, fowls, and palm wine, which they gladly exchanged for metal looking-glasses, red caps, beads, and trinkets.

Besides his wish to sail round the globe and take possession of new islands for Spain, Magellan’s great desire was to make the savage people Christians. He had the happiness of seeing thousands of dusky islanders kneeling before the crosses he had set up. But in his zeal to show those heathen the power of the Christian’s God, he led the warriors of one island in a fight against some unconverted savages and lost his life.

In three years, lacking twelve days from the time they started out, the ship Victoria returned to the Spanish port from which it had sailed, after making the first voyage around the world. This vessel was loaded with spices from the Moluccas, as Magellan had planned. A faithful lieutenant represented their departed leader at the court of King Charles of Spain, who rewarded the few survivors with high honors and liberal pensions.

CORTES, THE CONQUEROR

AMONG the millions of people who wondered at the strange stories of the new lands discovered by Columbus was Hernando, a seven-year-old son of a Spanish noble family named Cortes. His young mind was filled with longing for adventure. As soon as he was old enough Hernando left home to seek his fortune on the island of Santo Domingo in the new world. The governor of this island was pleased with the manner, pluck, and energy of Cortes, and offered to sell him a large estate on easy terms. But the young Spaniard answered haughtily, “I did not come here to plough like a field laborer; I came to get gold.”

It was not long before young Cortes saw a chance for adventure. He went with a Spanish governor to settle the island of Cuba. He soon became a favorite with this governor also. An adventurer returned from the part of the mainland now called Central America and Mexico with tales of the great wealth of the people called Aztecs, and of the gold mines there.

The governor of Cuba decided to send ships and men to conquer that country, and offered the command to Cortes, who worked like a hero to get ready for the campaign. He equipped eleven vessels with six hundred men. A hundred or more of these were sailors and workmen; and the rest, soldiers, some of whom were armed with muskets and some with crossbows. There were fourteen small cannon and sixteen horses in the outfit.

As Cortes was about to sail, the governor of Cuba changed his mind and sent an order to Havana giving the command of the expedition to another officer. But shrewd young Cortes got wind of this in time, and sailed away before the governor’s messengers arrived.

The soldiers and other men of the expedition agreed to stand by the brave leader and capture the new country for King Charles of Spain in their own name instead of the Cuban governor’s. This was exactly what that governor feared Cortes would try to do.

When the Spaniards landed on the continent the natives were afraid. They had never seen a horse, and they thought the men on horseback were monster human beings with four legs, half man and half horse. Yet they came bravely out of their hiding places to do battle with such frightful invaders. Then the Spaniards fired a cannon volley and shot off their muskets so that several of the Indians fell dead. “They are gods!” shouted the natives in deadly fear. “They have the lightning and thunder in their hands!” It did not take long for Cortes to make terms with these natives, some of whom became allies and interpreters for the Spaniards.

After founding a city at the coast, which he named Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz (Rich City of the True Cross), now called Vera Cruz, Cortes prepared to conquer the empire of the Aztecs with six hundred Spaniards and several thousand Mexican Indians. Montezuma, emperor of the Aztecs, heard of his coming, and tried to make him leave the country by sending rich presents from his capital in the mountains. But that did not stop Cortes.

In order to insure victory, the Spanish general committed a brave though desperate act. Choosing one ship from his fleet he manned it and sent a trusted officer back—to Spain, not Cuba—with some of Montezuma’s rich presents. With these Cortes sent other proofs of the wealth of the country which he was about to conquer and add to the empire of King Charles of Spain. Then, after taking from the other ten ships everything the Spaniards could use in the new country, Cortes ordered those vessels burned and sunk. Thus, having burned their bridges behind them, they had no way of escape but to go forward and fight for their fortunes, their country, and their very lives.

On the march of two hundred miles to Montezuma’s capital, the Spaniards beat the Tlascalans in battle and made friends with those Indians against the Aztec tyrant, as the Indians called Emperor Montezuma.

The Indians of the hot countries of America were not so savage as those who lived in the northern parts of the continent. But they had a terrible religious rite which they had learned from the Aztecs. They offered human lives to appease the sun god. Though the Aztecs were a peaceable people otherwise, they often went to war to take prisoners for these horrible sacrifices.

Cortes broke into a temple at one place on the way and murdered the priests who were killing and offering human beings to the sun god. He set up a cross and invited the people to become Christians or be killed. In that way he gained many converts from among the frightened Indians.

But with Hernando Cortes this kind of conversion was but a step toward gaining gold and power for himself and for the king of Spain. After many terrible battles, in which he massacred the helpless natives by thousands, he and his few hundred white men, with thousands of Indian allies, reached the capital of Montezuma. Built of stone on an island in the midst of a beautiful lake, this civilized city was connected with the mainland by six long stone bridges or causeways. The splendid capital, with its palaces and temples of hewn stone, had much of the beauty of Venice. The city measured twelve miles around. It was then hundreds of years old, and proved that the ancient Aztecs knew how to build great stone houses and bridges.

Montezuma came out to meet Cortes, borne on a golden throne on the shoulders of Aztec nobles and officials. He wore priceless feathers and his garments were embroidered with many-colored gems. Even his shoes were gold. His courtiers carried carpets to lay down before him, so that his sacred feet should not touch the ground. How the eyes of those greedy Spaniards glittered when they beheld such signs of the great wealth of Montezuma and his people!

The white men were received with great honor. They were served in golden goblets with a strange, rich drink which the Aztecs named chocolatl. This delicious drink is now called chocolate or cocoa. Montezuma told the Spaniards that their coming had been foretold by the priests for hundreds of years, ever since the visit of a pure white man, a son of the Sun who had come down from the skies. This sun-god had told the Aztecs that he would come again with other sun-gods and reign over the empire forever.

Cortes pretended to be the long-expected “fair god” of the Aztecs, and persuaded Montezuma to visit him in the palace assigned to the Spanish leader and his officers during their stay in the city. The people, who had no reason to believe in the Spanish soldiers, crowded around the sedan chair of their king, crying out against him because he was placing himself in the wicked hands of the strangers. Montezuma told them not to fear, for their guests were honorable men and he was sure that all would be well with him. But he soon found that he was not a guest but a prisoner, betrayed by a pretense of friendship. The Mexicans came again and attacked the palace which Cortes and his men had now turned into a fortress. During the months when the Spaniards held Montezuma as a prisoner a fierce war was waged with the Mexicans.

While Cortes and his army were in such desperate straits, word came that the governor of Cuba had sent ships and nearly a thousand men to bring the general and his followers back, to be punished as deserters. Cortes and a picked band crept out of the capital one dark night, marched hundreds of miles to the coast, and surprised and defeated the army the governor had sent. Then he returned, with all those armed men and many more cannon and horses, to relieve the small garrison he had left to hold the many thousands of Aztecs at bay, and capture the city of Mexico.

The Aztecs were frightened when they saw the thousand soldiers Cortes now brought up against them, for it looked as if the new troops had come down from the skies to the help of the Spaniards. When the battle was fiercest, the broken-spirited emperor went out to plead with the natives to stop their fighting. This made them so angry that they hurled stones at him and he died of a broken heart. The hatred of his own people was even harder to bear than Spanish cruelty.

After more fierce fighting, Cortes completed the conquest of Mexico. Years afterward he returned to his old home in Spain, where he was, for a time, treated as a great conqueror. But he suffered in later years from remorse for his treachery and cruelty. When he grew old he was imprisoned through the influence of Spanish enemies.

One day an old, broken man with shaggy gray locks pushed through the crowd around King Charles of Spain, now known as Emperor Charles the Fifth and the most powerful monarch in the world. When the emperor asked the old man who he was, he replied with indignant pride,

“I am Cortes, the man who has given you more provinces than your ancestors left you cities.”

DE SOTO, A GOLD HUNTER IN SOUTHERN SWAMPS

Therefore on a bright July day he left Cuba in charge of a high official and sailed away. He and his knights in armor stood on the decks of their nine ships, large and small, and waved farewells to the fair ladies who stood on the castle tower at Havana weeping bitterly, fearing that they would never see their brave lords and knights again.

Governor de Soto and his fleet came to anchor in the harbor now known as Tampa Bay. During the night they were aroused by horrible yells and showers of arrows from the shore. In the morning the Spaniards made a landing, though the natives fought hard to keep them back. Before night they met a man who could be of great use to them. He was a member of a party that, after De Leon’s discovery, had gone to Florida to find gold, but had been driven back. This young man, Juan Ortiz, had been captured and kept by the Indians as a slave. A member of De Soto’s scouting party tells how they met this poor fellow:

The Spanish governor received Ortiz as if he were his own long-lost son. He made himself very useful because he knew both the Spanish and the Indian language, and thus could help the Spaniards to talk to the natives.

De Soto now started inland leading a brilliant company of knights and private soldiers, all in bright armor. Over the shining helmets were waving plumes, and many a mailed fist held aloft a rich and beautiful banner. There were hundreds of horsemen and many more men marching on foot. No more richly dressed men and horses ever started out on a Crusade to regain possession of the Holy City. But the object of this Spanish quest was gold. Spanish serving men drove along with this rich and gay procession four hundred fat hogs. De Soto had decided not to risk being starved to death as so many explorers had been. And gamekeepers held in leash, not falcons to catch and kill birds or beasts, but bloodhounds for hunting Indians.

Instead of mountains of rocks from which gold could be mined, De Soto’s men found swamps. The weather was sultry and moist. Insects got inside their knightly armor and stung them to madness, and venomous serpents coiled around their armored legs. Indians shot poisoned arrows at them from the bushes. Their coats of mail were so heavy that stout knights sank deep in the bogs. They advanced very slowly; they wallowed rather than marched, and their days and nights were spent in weariness and torture.

The fame of the white men went on ahead of them. As De Soto advanced he found the savages on the warpath ready to drive back the invaders. All along their line of march they could hear savage threats in the distance. Juan Ortiz told the Spaniards that the Indians were shouting:

“Keep on, robbers and murderers! In Apalachee you will get what you deserve. No mercy will be shown to captives, who will be hung on the highest trees along the trail.”

After the Spaniards had marched through the lands of five different chiefs, they found a great chieftain who seemed to wish to make friends with the white men. De Soto gladly accepted, but Juan Ortiz warned him to look out for treachery. So the white men were secretly prepared; and when the traitor chief gave the signal to his men to attack, the Spaniards raised their battle cry, “Santiago!” and thousands of the savages were killed by a few hundred Spaniards. Hundreds of Indians took refuge in a lake. There five good swimmers would lie side by side, on the surface like logs, forming a human raft on which the best archer would stand and shoot back at the white men. The fight lasted all day and nearly all night. Before morning all the Indians were killed or captured, put in chains, and divided among the Spaniards as slaves.

The Indians, who at first thought the white men were gods, were now sure they were devils. The boasted village of Apalachee was only a few straw huts on a knoll in the center of a great swamp. And the savages who defended it with bows and arrows were no match for armed Spaniards; the white men killed nearly all of them.

Cold weather came on, and the Spaniards went into winter quarters. A beautiful Indian girl-chief in that region came bringing pearls and gems to the Spanish chieftain. But he demanded gold. When she understood this she sent men to a far country for the yellow metal he desired so eagerly. De Soto and his men now rejoiced, for they thought they had found the object of their long and painful search. When the red messengers returned the stuff proved not to be gold. It must have been copper ore or “fool’s gold.”

During the second year of their long march, the Spaniards were led southward to Mabila, which is believed to have stood on the shore of Mobile Bay. This was a huge fortress, the greatest native town the white men had yet seen. Within an immense stockade or wall of tree trunks on end stood a number of houses each of which would hold hundreds of Indians.

Tuscaloosa, the Mabile chief, set a trap for the Spaniards. The battle which took place here was the worst of all. The