on whose interior walls still exist paintings which are to-day the oldest and best examples of mural work, by the ancient dwellers of these mysterious lands, found in Central or South America.

The cyclopean walls of these structures represent years of unflagging labour and a high order of architecture. The size of the immense stones which enter into the construction of these temples, palaces and basilicas almost staggers belief while you are gazing on them. How they were separated from the matrix in the quarries many miles away, what tools were used in squaring them and rounding the columns, by what means they were brought to the cities, what machinery, if any, was employed to swing and carry them to the heights of the buildings these are questions that rise spontaneously to the mind and remain there unanswered.

CHAPTER XVII

A CAMPAIGN OF HEROISM-MARCH OF THE
SPANIARDS TO HONDURAS

'Tis a strange,

An awful conflict-an unearthly war!

It is as if the dead had risen up

To battle with each other-the stern strife

Of spirits visible to mortal eyes.

-Whittier.

THERE is not in modern history, and taking no account of numbers, perhaps not in all history an event less generally known or more striking to the imagination than the march of the Spaniards from the city of Mexico to the shores of the Bay of Honduras. It has no parallel in history. It was a trial of strength on the part of man-of human will and endurance—against the spectre of famine and the elemental forces of nature, not indeed of nature in its awful moods of hurricanes, cyclones, and volcanic wrath, but in its wild state, its anger and persistent irritability. The Parthian expeditions of the Romans, the Anabasis of the younger Cyrus, and the subsequent retreat of the ten thousand to the shores of the Black Sea, and above all the retreat of the French from Moscow are in a class by themselves and invite no comparison. The flight of the Tinontates-the last of the Hurons-before the pursuing hatred and hound-like pertinacity of

the Iroquois, and the race for Manchuria of the Ubeck Tartars with the Cossack cavalry, amid starvation and pitiless cold in the early part of the eighteenth century, evoke our commiseration and pity, but the expedition of the Spaniards to Honduras asks only for our admiration and wonder.

After centuries of occupation by the white race there are yet in this mysterious land vast tropical regions where trackless wastes of pestilential jungles and reeking morasses rear an almost impassable barrier to exploration. There in the vast laboratory of the sun nature exults in her own monstrous fecundity, waited upon by a no less monstrous destruction. Prodigal of life, she seems to riot in a prodigious exuberance of creative force, and to fling out in reckless profusion whole systems of organisms, only to see them devour and prey upon each other.

Earth, quickened by the stimulus of solar energy and humidity, teems with germs, and, as in a seething hot-bed, forces them into rapid and luxuriant vitality followed by correspondingly swift dissolution. The very surface of the small lakes becomes covered each season with a tangle of succulent vegetation; a festering mass of decay where the putrescence of a disappearing vegetation vitalizes the birth of a new generation and feeds its rank redundance.

Into this tremendous orgy of nature man enters at his peril—an unwelcome intruder upon the wanton mood of the universal mother. All her elements conspire against him and develop monstrous activi

ties hostile to his life. The earth breeds poison, the stagnant waters exhale fever, and the very air swarms with a microscopic life fatal to his own. Snakes and poisonous reptiles, of sanguinary and predatory habits, swarms of winged enemies of venomous bite and sting, and plants exuding infection make war upon the intruder and bar his path.

This was the land and these the enemies which confronted the daring Spaniard Cortez and his heroic band of veterans when he entered upon his historic march to the Bay of Honduras. Plutarch, writing of the achievements of Caesar, and comparing him with other great generals, says: "He surpassed one in the difficulty of the scene of action, another in the extent of the countries he subdued, this one in the number and strength of the enemies he overcame, that in the savage manners and treacherous dispositions of the people he humanized." Reading this encomium one would believe that the seasoned old campaigner and chronicler, Bernal Diaz, was recording his opinion of his friend and commander, Hernandez Cortez.

The Spanish chief had fought his way from the ocean, conquered the warlike Aztecs, rebuilt the city of Mexico after its ruin, and now hearing that his lieutenant, Christobal de Olid, whom he had commissioned to found a settlement in distant Honduras, revolted against his authority, Cortez, summoning the remnants of his veterans and his Indian allies to his aid, organized his punitory expedition. Early on the morning of October 12th, 1524, the

troops mobilized in the plaza of Tacuba, a suburb of the Aztec city, and at once entered upon a march to the Caribbean Sea that will for all time hold a conspicuous place in the annals of military achievements. In advance rode the trumpeters, Ortego and Christobal; Coral, bearing aloft the banner of conquest, followed, and on their heels was a battery of artillery of four pieces. Then marched three thousand Indian allies, led and officered by their caciques and war chiefs. In their company, carried in palanquins and escorted by a plumed guard, were the king of Tacubaya and Guatemozin, the last of the Montezumas. Sandavel, the dauntless, rode at the head of his fifty marching veterans. Superbly mounted, unmailed and unvisored, came Cortez, conqueror of Mexico, and one of the most extraordinary men that ever trod the American continent. On his right was Father John de las Varillas, chaplain to the troops, and on his left, Pedro de Alvaredo, he of the giant leap and lion heart.

The romantic Marina, who saved the army at Cholula, female interpreter to the Spanish chief, and beloved of the army, was carried by negro slaves. Then came one hundred and fifty mounted men, battle-scarred veterans, bronzed to the hue of Etruscan statues, seasoned warriors all of them, revellers in the camp and fighting demons on the field. Masters of the sword they were, and trained to the use of the lance, whom no dangers could appal or fatigue conquer; with them were the scouts, whose work lay yet some weeks before them, two