According to Robertson, Cortés told his men that he had proposed to establish a colony on the coast, before marching into the country; but he abandoned his design, at their entreaties to set out at once on the expedition. In the very next page we find him organizing this same colony. (History of America, vol. ii. pp. 241, 242.) The historian would have been saved this inconsistency, if he had followed either of the authorities whom he cites, Bernal Diaz and Herrera, or the letter from Vera Cruz, of which he had a copy. They all concur in the statement in the text.

Las Casas, Hist. de las Indias, MS., lib. 3, cap. 122.—Carta de Vera Cruz, MS.—Declaracion de Montejo, MS.—Declaracion de Puertocarrero, MS.—“Our general, after some urging, acquiesced,” says the blunt old soldier Bernal Diaz; “for, as the proverb says, ‘You ask me to do what I have already made up my mind to.’” Tu me lo ruegas, é yo me lo quiero. Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 42.

According to Bernal Diaz, the title of “Vera Cruz” was intended to commemorate their landing on Good Friday. Hist. de la Conquista, cap. 42.

Solís, whose taste for speech-making might have satisfied even the Abbé Mably (see his Treatise, “De la Manière d’écrire l’Histoire”), has put a very flourishing harangue on this occasion into the mouth of his hero, of which there is not a vestige in any contemporary account. (Conquista, lib. 2, cap. 7.) Dr. Robertson has transferred it to his own eloquent pages, without citing his author, indeed, who, considering he came a century and a half after the Conquest, must be allowed to be not the best, especially when the only, voucher for a fact.