and others to put him to death; who patiently endured the indescribable fatigues and hardships of the ninety-three days' siege of Mexico, during which time we had night and day encountered the attacks of an infuriated enemy until at length we placed him in possession of that strong city. We remained faithful to him when Christobal de Tapia arrived in New Spain with the appointment of governor. We wrote three several times to his majesty in praise of the great services he had rendered to the crown, extolling his loyalty to the skies, and begging of his majesty to confer upon him the appointment of governor. I will not even mention the many other great services which we rendered to our general; but certainly, after he had obtained the government of New Spain, he ought to have remembered the brave and courageous men who also, subsequent to the conquest of Mexico, made those severe campaigns to Colima, Zacatula, and Panuco, and those of the troops who from extreme poverty were obliged to relinquish the settlement founded by Alvarado at Tutepec.
We had altogether shared badly in the division of the Indians, and miserable districts of the country had been allotted to us, although his majesty had so often desired Cortes to reward our meritorious conduct, and to give us the preference in all matters. In all his letters which he wrote to his agents in Spain he ought never to have omitted mentioning our names with unbounded praise, and ought to have made it a point of obtaining from his majesty, for ourselves and children, the preference in all official appointments in New Spain: but he never gave this a thought; and on both occasions, the one when he obtained the appointment of governor, and the other when he went to Spain himself and became Marquis of Oaxaca, he only strove to further his own ends, and he forgot his brave companions in arms. Indeed, the most sensible and intelligent of the Conquistadores were quite of opinion that nothing would have been juster on the part of Cortes, and nothing more practicable at that time, than to have divided the whole of New Spain into five equal parts: one fifth, containing the best townships, to have been set apart for the