CHAPTER III. RETURN OF GRIJALVA. A NEW EXPEDITION ORGANIZED. 1518.

man as best he liked to be treated. A cavalier of the Ojeda and Balboa type, he was superior to either. He would not, like the former, woo danger for the mere pleasure of it, nor, like the latter, tamely trust his forfeited head to any governor. Life was of value to him; yet adventure was the rhythm of it, and the greater the peril the greater the harmony secured. An hidalgo of respectable antecedents, whatever he might have been, or might be, he now played the part of magistrate to perfection. As a matter of course, he was in entire sympathy with the religious views of the day, as well as with the leading men among the clergy. Indeed the friars ever praised him, believing him to be a zealous and conscientious man; he made it a point that they should. The moral ideal of the Japanese is politeness. Politeness is virtue. They do not say that lying and stealing are wrong, but impolite. While the alcalde if pressed must confess himself an optimist, believing that whatever is, is best, yet in practice that best he would better, and whatsoever his strength permitted, it was right for him to do. He was a sort of Mephistopheles, decked in manners and guided by knowledge. Besides the world, he knew books, and how to make somewhat of them. Earnestly devoted to the service of the church, many of his acts yet met with its most unqualified condemnation. Possessed of vehement aspirations, his ambition was of the aggressive kind; not like that of Velazquez, mercenary and timid. Like Tigellinus Sophonius, it was to his pleasing person and unscrupulous character that the alcalde owed his rise from poverty and obscurity; and now, like Phaethon, if for one day he might drive the governor’s sun-chariot across the heavens, it would be his own fault if he were not a made man. This much at this time we may say of Hernan¹⁶ Cortés, for such was the alcalde’s name; which is more than he could say for himself, not knowing himself as we know him, and more than his associates could say of him. Hereafter as his character develops we shall become further acquainted with him. It is as difficult to detect the full-grown plant in a seed as in a stone, and yet the seed will become a great tree, while the stone remains a stone.