CHAPTER XXXIV. THE CONQUEST ACHIEVED. July-August , 1521.

From this mass of what may be termed documentary evidence we turn to the regular historians and narrators, beginning with Peter Martyr and Oviedo, who both adhere chiefly to Cortés, though the latter adds other versions by different eye-witnesses. Sahagun’s account contains a strange admixture of native absurdities and vague recollections of converted soldiers. A more complete version is given by Gomara, the biographer of the great captain, who had access to private and public archives and individual narratives now lost; but he frequently colors the incidents to the credit of his hero and his profession. Nevertheless the value of the text is testified to by his Mexican translator Chimalpain, who adds some interesting facts from native records and personal knowledge. The Tezcucan writer Ixtlilxochitl also follows him pretty closely for the Spanish side, while the archives left him by his royal ancestors and different narratives furnish the other side, frequently absurd and highly colored. Camargo gives a rather brief Tlascaltec version. Gomara’s coloring, which, in accordance with the method of most historians, leaves the credit for achievements with the leader, roused the feelings of more than one of the soldiers who had shared in the glories of that period, and Bernal Diaz promptly began to write his celebrated Historia Verdadera, which professes to tell the true story and rectify in particular the so-called blunders of Gomara. Although this profession is not always to be relied on, the story is most valuable from its exceeding completeness, its many new facts, and its varied version. Not long after, Herrera, the official historiographer, began his decades, wherein for the conquest he uses the material already printed, with a leaning toward Gomara, yet with several additional narratives to perfect his own revised version, notably that of Ojeda, a leading officer under Cortés, and also no small mass of material from the archives