"Cortez
and his companions," says Chevalier, "had incurred the necessity of
signalizing themselves by some great exploit. They had committed a fault
which the laws of all states treated as crime, and one that the leaders
must expiate on the gibbet and their followers at the galleys, unless
atoned for by brilliant deeds. Their departure from Cuba was an act of
flagrant rebellion." In his great haste to get away from Cuba he
embarked in nine small vessels, the largest not over one hundred tons
and some were even undecked boats. Velasquez, the governor of the island
of Cuba, had for some time previously contemplated sending an expedition
to Mexico, and having got it about ready for departure, he was
over-persuaded to give Cortez the command; but after due consideration,
repenting of his decision, he took steps to replace him by a more
trusted officer. Cortez learned of this, and hastily got as many of the
people together who had enlisted for the purpose as he could, and
putting the munitions on board, sailed without taking leave! He had
already been once pardoned out of prison by Velasquez, where he was
confined for gross insubordination, and for the baseness of his private
life, which, though he was thirty-four years of age, exhibited all the
faults of earliest manhood. R. A. Wilson pronounces the expedition to
have been "purely piratical, whose leader could have no hope of royal
pardon but in complete success." Cortez knew that it would not answer
for him to return to Cuba, therefore he unhesitatingly destroyed the
means by which even his comrades could do so. These facts rob the act
which has been so lauded by historians of all heroism. Depend upon it,
all our heroes have feet of clay. He had just made a rough campaign with
the natives of Tabasco, in Yucatan, where he learned that farther up the
Gulf, where he finally landed, there was "a people who had much gold."
That was what he sought. It was not God but gold that drew him onward
from Vera Cruz to Montezuma's capital. He was not seeking to
christianize the natives; that was a plausible subterfuge. His aim was
to enrich himself with native spoils and to acquire empire, nor did he
pause until he had consummated the ruin of a kingdom and his own
aggrandizement.

The traveler should not fail to take a boat across the bay to the
castle, and there visit the dark and dismal dungeons built below the
surrounding waters of the Gulf, like those in the castle of Chillon
beneat