despatched a vessel under the command of Olid in search of his tardy officer. Nor was he content with this jealous exhibition of his temper; for, anxious to secure to himself all the glory and treasure to be derived from the boundless resources of a continent, he solicited authority from the Spanish crown to prosecute the adventures that had been so auspiciously begun; and, in the meanwhile, after considerable deliberation, resolved to fit out another armament on a scale, in some degree, commensurate with the military subjugation of the country, should he find himself opposed by its sovereign and people. After considerable doubt, difficulty and delay, he resolved to entrust this expedition to the command of Hernando Cortéz; "the last man," says Prescott, "to whom Velasquez,—could he have foreseen the results,—would have confided the enterprise."
It will not be foreign to our purpose to sketch, briefly, the previous life of a man who subsequently became so eminent in the history of both worlds. Seven years before Columbus planted the standard of Castile and Arragon in the West Indies, Hernando Cortéz, was born, of a noble lineage, in the town of Medellin, in the Province of Estremadura, in Spain. His infancy was frail and delicate, but his constitution strengthened as he grew, until, at the age of fourteen, he was placed in the venerable university of Salamanca, where his parents, who rejoiced in the extreme vivacity of his talents, designed to prepare him for the profession of law, the emoluments of which were, at that period, most tempting in Spain. But the restless spirit of the future conqueror was not to be manacled by the musty ritual of a tedious science whose pursuit would confine him to a quiet life. He wasted two years at the college, and, like many men who subsequently became renowned either for thought or action, was finally sent home in disgrace. Nevertheless, in the midst of his recklessness, and by the quickness of his genius, he had learned "a little store of Latin," and acquired the habit of writing good prose, or of