message from
Montezuma, however, did not please him much. Montezuma excused himself
from having a personal interview by "the distance being too great, and
the journey beset with difficulties and dangers from formidable
enemies.... All that could be done, therefore, was for the strangers to
return to their own land."

Soon after Cortes, by a species of statecraft, formed a new
municipality, thus transforming his camp into a civil community. The
name of the new city was _Villa Rica de Vera Cruz_, i. e., "the Rich
Town of the True Cross." Once the municipality was formed, Cortes
resigned before them his office of captain-general, and thus became free
from the authority of Velasquez. The city council at once chose Cortes
to be captain-general and chief justice of the colony. He could now go
forward unchecked by any superior except the Crown.

It was a desperate undertaking to climb with an army from the hot region
of this flat coast through the varied succession of "slopes" which form
the temperate region, and at last, on the high table-land, obtain
entrance upon the great enclosed valley of Mexico. Cortes found that an
essential preliminary was to gain the friendship of the Totonacs, a
nation tributary to Montezuma. Their subjection to the Aztecs he had
already verified, since one day when holding a conference with the
Totonac leaders and a neighboring cazique (i. e., "prince"), Cortes saw
five men of haughty appearance enter the market-place, followed by
several attendants, and at once receive the politest attention from the
Totonacs.

Cortes asked Marina, his slave interpreter, who or what they were. "They
are Aztec nobles," she replied, "sent by Montezuma to receive tribute."
Presently the Totonac chiefs came to Cortes with looks of dire dismay,
to inform him of the great Emperor's resentment at the entertainment
offered to the Spaniards, and demanding in expiation twenty young men
and women for sacrifice to the Aztec gods.

Cortes, with every look of indignation, insisted that the Totonacs
should not only refuse to comply, but should seize the Aztec messengers
and hold them strictly confined in prison. Unscrupulous to gain his
ends, Cortes by lies and cunning duplicity managed to set the Mexican
nobles free, dismissing them with a friendly message to Montezuma, while
at the same time securing the confidence of the simple-minded Totonacs,
urging them to join the Spaniards and make a bold effort to regain their
ind