Birthplace of Hernan Cortés—His Coming Compensatory for the Devil-sent Luther—Parentage—Hernan a Sickly Child—Saint Peter his Patron—He is Sent to Salamanca—Returns Home—Thinks of Córdoba and Italy—And of Ovando and the Indies—Chooses the Latter—Narrow Escape during a Love Intrigue—Ovando Sails without Him—Cortés Goes to Valencia—Is there Ill—Returns Home—Finally Sails for the Indies—His Reception at Santo Domingo—He Fights Indians under Velazquez, and is Given an Encomienda—Goes to Cuba with Velazquez—Makes Love to Catalina Suarez—But Declines to Marry—Velazquez Insists—Cortés Rebels—Seizures, Imprisonments, Escapes, and Reconciliation.
Let us now look into the life of this Cuban magistrate, so suddenly raised to prominence.
Medellin, a small town of Estremadura, Spain, was the birthplace of Hernan Cortés, and 1485 the year in which he was born—miraculously born, as Mendieta and others believe, and perhaps by way of compensation for the appearing about this time of Martin Luther.1 The shade of Montezuma, peradventure, might deny that his was the advent of a new Messiah, though the deluded monarch, at the first, sorrowfully hailed him as such. The father, Martin Cortés y Monroy, was of that poor but prolific class who filled Spain toward the close of the Moorish wars, and who, although nothing in particular, were nevertheless permitted to call themselves hidalgos, sons of something. Some give him the title of escudero, others place him