leapt the canal clean, while the Indians shouted, "This is indeed the
Tonatiah, the child of the Sun." The gap is shown now, and it is called
to this day, Alvarado's Leap. God forgive him! for if he was a cruel
man, he was at least a brave one!

Cortez sat down, a ruined man, and as he looked round for his old
comrades, and missed one face after another, he covered his face with his
hands and cried like a child.

And was he a ruined man? Never less. No man is ruined till his pluck is
gone. He got his starving and shivering men together, and away for the
mountains to get back to the friendly people of Tlascala. The people
followed them along the hills shouting, "Go on! you will soon find
yourselves where you cannot escape." But he went on--till he saw what
they meant.

Waiting for him in a pass was an army of Indians--two hundred thousand,
some writers say--all fresh and fully armed. What could he do? To
surrender, was to be sacrificed every man to the idols; so he marched on.
He had still twenty horses, and he put ten on each flank. He bade his
men not strike with their sword but give the point. He made a speech to
his men. They had beaten the Indians, he said, many a time at just as
fearful odds. God had brought them through so far, God would not desert
them, for they were fighting on His side against the heathen; and so he
went straight at the vast army of Indians. They were surrounded,
swallowed up by them for a few minutes. In the course of an hour the
Spaniards had routed them utterly with immense slaughter.

Of all the battles I ever read of, this battle of Otumba is one of the
most miraculous. Some say that Cortez conquered Mexico by gunpowder: he
had none then, neither cannon nor musket. The sword and lance did it
all, and they in the hands of men worn out with famine, cold, and
fatigue, and I had said broken-hearted into the bargain. But there was
no breaking those men's hearts--what won that battle, what won Mexico,
was the indomitable pluck of the white man, before which the Indian,
whether American or Hindoo, never has stood, and never will stand to the
world's end. The Spaniards proved it in America of old, though they were
better armed than the Indian. But there are those who have proved it
upon Indians as well armed as themselves. Ay, my friends, I should be no
Englishman, if while I told this story, I could help thinking all the
while of our brave comrades in India, who have conqu