CHAPTER XXIX. KING-MAKING AND CONVERTING. October-December, 1520.

Civilization! What fools we are, pluming ourselves in its radiance, the radiance of ghastly electrical lights, adopted instead of the glorious sun of nature. For is not the unartificial nature, and nature God, while artifice is rather of the devil? And yet we persist in glorifying artifice and calling it deity. The human sacrifice of the Aztecs was a horrible rite, but in the hands of the Spaniards is not Christianity a bloody mistress? And does not European civilization constantly demand the sacrifice of millions of lives, if not for the propitiation of gods, then to avenge an insult, to preserve the integrity of a nation, or to gratify the spleen of rulers? At hand even now, coming to the assistance of the magnificent Cortés, civilization’s pride and pet for the moment, is another ally of civilization, more terrible than horses, blood-hounds, gunpowder, or steel. At the time of Narvaez’ departure for Cuba, small-pox was raging there so severely that it offered a reason for preventing the governor from leaving with the expedition. A pioneer vessel of the fleet sowed the malady at Cozumel, whence it entered the continent. Before it spread far in this direction Cempoala was infected by a negro slave of Narvaez.¹³ The Spaniards knew little about its treatment, and that little they sought to impart, not for their own safety, since those that were left of them were considered almost proof against the malady, but for the sake of the allies. Their advice did not avail much, however, for the natives were too devoted to their panacea, the hot and cold bath, which only intensified the evil. The terrible force of the first attacks of epidemics and endemics is well known, and it has been advocated with apparent truth that the diseases of a strong people fall with particular force on weaker races. After desolating the coast region for some time, the small-pox crossed the plateau border during the summer, and in September¹⁴ it broke out round the lakes, on its way to the western sea, smiting high and low, rich and