whose influence in Spain was immense. The protection of such a man, he said, might perhaps be of the utmost importance to him, as his majesty and the council of the Indies were much prejudiced against him; it would be altogether injurious to his interests to act more severely against the factor than the law permitted. This counsel Ordas thought proper to give Cortes, as it was generally suspected in Mexico that he intended putting the factor to death in his prison.
Before I proceed with my narrative I must inform the reader why, when speaking of Cortes, I never call him Don Hernando Cortes, or marquis, or by any other title, but plainly Cortes. The reason is, that he himself was best pleased when he was simply addressed as Cortes; besides that, he was not created marquis until some time after, and that the name of Cortes stood in equal renown throughout the whole of Spain at that time as in the Roman period the names of Julius Cæsar and of Pompey; and in the Carthaginian as that of Hannibal; or, in the earlier part of our history, the name of the valiant and invincible knight Diego Garcia de Paredes; or, in more recent times, the name of Gonzalo Hernandez, surnamed the Great Captain.