appears, lay with the bridegroom; and certain it is this matter caused so much annoyance to Cortes that it brought on a severe fever, accompanied by dysentery. Finding that his sickness was growing upon him, he left the town of Seville, and retired to Castilleja de la Cuesta to enjoy more repose. Here he ordered all his affairs, made his last will, and was called away from this world of troubles on the 2d of September, 1547, after receiving the holy sacrament and extreme unction. He was buried with every pomp and magnificence in the chapel containing the sepultures of the dukes of Medina Sidonia, and he was followed to the grave by a large body of the clergy and a number of cavaliers. Subsequently his remains were taken to New Spain, and interred, according to a desire expressed in his last will, either in Cojohuacan or Tezcuco,57 I forget which.
The following is what I know respecting Cortes' age. When we first set out with him for New Spain from Cuba, in the year 1519, we often heard him say in the course of conversation, that he was thirty-four years of age, and from this day until the day of his death twenty-eight years had elapsed, which will bring his age to sixty-two.58
The following were the children he left behind him born in lawful wedlock: the present marquis Don Martin; Doña Maria, who was to have been married to Don Perez Osorio, but who afterwards married the earl of Luna de Leon; Doña Juana, the wife of Don Hernando Enriquez, heir to the marquisate of Tarifa; and Doña Catalina de Arellano, who died in Seville. Besides these there was another daughter of Cortes, named Doña Leonor, who was married to a wealthy gentleman of Biscay, living in Mexico, named Juan de Toloso, who possessed lucrative silver mines. When the present marquis del Valle arrived in New Spain, he greatly disapproved of this match.
Besides these children, Cortes had two sons and three daughters born out of wedlock. One of these sons, named Don Martin, was a