e singular
individual to whom these queries are addressed, he winds up with the
solemn and emphatic declaration, "On the evidence hereafter to be
presented, we have with much deliberation concluded to _denounce_ Bernal
Diaz as a _myth_." For the evidence here promised we have searched
with a patience of investigation which, if applied to the problem of
perpetual motion or squaring the circle, could not, we humbly think,
have been wholly unproductive; and these are the results. "The author of
'Bernal Diaz' says the march to Jalapa was accomplished in one day;--a
proof that he never saw the country.... Cortez makes the ascent the work
of three days, and says he did not reach Sienchimalen until the fourth
day." The main discrepancy here is Mr. Wilson's own handiwork, as he
has confounded the "Sienchimalen" of Cortes with Jalapa, instead of
identifying it with the "Socochima" of Bernal Diaz. But so far as there
is any real discrepancy, it may be sufficient to remark, in explanation
of it, that Bernal Diaz professes to have written many years after the
events which he narrates, and at a distance from the scene, while the
letters of Cortes were written in the country, and while the events were
taking place. On another occasion, Bernal Diaz represents the Tlascalans
as complaining that they could "get no cotton for their clothing." "If
this writer," says Mr. Wilson, "had really been acquainted with the
tribes of the table-land, he must have known that the fibres of the
_maguey_ were, among them, substitutes for that article, and are even
now used at the city of Mexico in the manufacture of some fine fabrics."
We do not see how Bernal Diaz could be expected to know that the fibres
of the _maguey_ are now used in Mexican manufactures; neither can we
comprehend how his statement, that the Tlascalans had _no_ cotton, is at
variance with Mr. Wilson's assertion, that they used the _maguey_ as a
substitute. We can imagine, however, that an old soldier, writing for
the "uninitiated," might prefer to speak of cotton, for which he had a
Spanish word, rather than enter into explanations in regard to an Indian
substitute for cotton, resembling it in appearance; while it is not easy
to believe, on Mr. Wilson's bare assertion, that an article in
common use throughout the Valley of Mexico was wholly unknown to the
inhabitants of the table-land.

These, and, so far as we can discover, these alone, are the proofs on
which Mr. Wilson convicts B