they returned to their families to exhibit, as trophies of their prowess, the scalps of the slaughtered foe. While the other nations of Anahuac had been weakened in the conflicts with the Spaniards, and each other, the Chichimecs had been gradually increasing in power and numbers, and they at length advanced to within fifteen leagues of the capital, in the province of Xalisco. The Spaniards fitted out an expedition from Mexico under Christoval de Onate, to conquer them. He experienced a complete overthrow, however, and despatched couriers for aid to Alvarado, who hastened from his province of Guatimala to succour him. The war was continued with the most desperate bravery on both sides, until the death of Alvarado. This was occasioned by an accident met with in battle. The enemy occupied a rocky mountain height, from which the assailants made repeated efforts to expel them. In one of these engagements, a horse stumbled and rolled headlong down a steep declivity; Alvarad happened to be ascending the same hill, and was unable to get ou of the way of the rolling horse, which carried him down and lay upon him when both reached the bottom. He was so badly crushed by the fall, and the irritation of his wounds caused by being carried a three days' journey for medical help, that he shortly afterwards expired. Alvarado had pursued a career since the conquest of Mexico only 'ess glorious than that of Cortes himself. Despatched by Cortes to conquer Guatimala, he commenced his march in 1523, with thirtyfive horsemen, three hundred infantry, two hundred Tlascalans and Cholulans, a hundred Mexicans, and four pieces of artillery. In Tecum Uman, the king of the Quiches, he found an enemy worthy to be dreaded by any of the great captains of the age. He assembled an army of more than two hundred thousand men, and as the Spaniards advanced through the Cordilleras, met them at every pass, and disputed their passage with the most heroic determination; and the slaughter was so great that the very river ran red from the blood poured into it from the mountains. At length the main body of the Quiches and the Spaniards met in a pitched battle on the open plain. The king boldly singled out Alvarado, and offered him battle in person it was accepted, and the royal hero fell a victim to his gallantry. His subjects continued the battle, however, and avenged his death by killing many of their enemies. They lost the battle, however, and the new king attempted to destroy his enemy by stratagem. He was detected, however, and himself inveigled by Alvarado into a snare, made prisoner, and hung. The Quiches renewed the war, and were only subdued after repeated and terrible defeats. When they had once submitted to his yoke, they proved as serviceable to him in establishing his authority over the whole country, as the Tlascalans had been to Cortes, and the boldness and rapacity which had marked his course in Mexico, being tempered by the lessons of prudence and watchfulness taught him there by disaster, fitted him for the arduous duty. He founded the city of St. Jago on the 25th of July, 1524, as the permanent seat of his new colony, and returned from his successive expeditions laden with wealth and covered with glory. Pursuing the course of conquest so brilliantly opened to him, he marched into South America, where he encountered the forces of Pizarro. That officer, however, avoided hostilities, and purchased the retreat of Alvarado by a magnificent present. In the full tide of prosperity, however, the generous soldier gallantly marched to assist a brother Spaniard in distress, and, as we have seen, met his death, leaving the companions he had so often led to victory inconsolable at his loss. More than two years of fighting were necessary to overcome this able tribe, and their final reduction was only effected when the viceroy, Mendoza, summoned to his aid a host of fifty thousand Indians of Tlascala, Cholula, and Tepeaca, who seem to have had for their Lission the conquest of all Anahuac for the crown of Castile. Conquered, but unsubjected, the Chichimecs long remained formidable, and the city of San Miguel was built, and those of Durango and San Sebastian enlarged, as a means of protection against them. There were, in other parts of the country, partial revolts against the Spanish M authority, but these were generally suppressed without difficulty, and only served to render the Spanish yoke more heavy. Meanwhile new cities were erected in every part of the country, new populations came from Spain, Cuba, and Saint Domingo, attracted by the fertility of the soil, the pursuit of commerce, which reaped many harvests; by the demand for the productions of the new country, sugar, cocoa, cochineal, indigo, and cotton; and, above all, by the desire of discovering natural sources of wealth, mines of gold and silver. The viceroys encouraged all private enterprises for these purposes, and the exploration and development of the new province was chiefly effected in this manner. The missionaries, too, did much to widen the limits of the empire. Entering the territories of hostile nations in the fearlessness which usually accompanies a high sense of duty, they induced the unconquerable natives to submit to their spiritual sway, by the holiness of their lives, the gentleness of their demeanour, and their incessant, judicious exhortations. The work of conversion accomplished, to welcome their countrymen in arms, and transfer the civil allegiance of those whom they had reduced to spiritual subjection, was attended with little difficulty. Other expeditions were also undertaken to extend the jurisdiction of the viceroys. Alvaro Nunez, surnamed Cabeca de Vaca, (one of three hundred Spaniards who had landed with Narvaez in Florida, and, escaping with three others from the massacre of the detachment, war dered several years across Louisiana and Mexico to the coast of the province of La Sonora,) published, in 1537, a mendacious account of his thousand hairbreadth escapes, and the wonderful nations and countries he had visited. Others, highly gifted with credulity and powers of the imagination, added to his account by stating that God had contributed to his escape by giving him power to heal the sick, and even to raise the dead, to which the modest hero added a statement, forgotten in his first narrative, that the coast of California was carpeted with pearls. Scarcely less marvellous was the account of Marco de Nizza, a monk, whom Las Casas had caused to be sent to convert the Indians of La Sonora. This functionary penetrated far to the north of the Gulf of California, and returned to give a picture of the civilization of the country, replete with the most fantastic colouring. He described the city of Cibola and seven others, all imaginary, whose houses were of stone, two stories high, with the doors enriched with turquoises, and whose inhabitants ate out of gold plates. Charity towards the holy father compels us to admit the supposition which some have advanced, that the stories of Cibola and the seven sister cities grew out of an ardent imagination, and the ill understood accounts of the savages of the Casas Grandes of the Rio Gila, a supposed station of the Aztecs. |