on a plan which, we venture to say, is without a parallel
in literature. Like whatever else is strikingly original, it cannot be
described; we can only hope to convey a faint idea of it by some random
illustrations. To nearly every statement which he notices in the works
before him Mr. Wilson offers a flat contradiction. When these statements
relate to numbers, his method of treating them is a systematic one.
He has picked out of Bernal Diaz, who wrote in an avowed spirit of
hostility to Gomara, a pettish remark, that the exaggerations of the
latter are so great, that, when he says eighty thousand, we may read
one thousand. This piece of rhetoric Mr. Wilson receives literally,
and makes it a rule of measurement, applying it with more or less
exactness,--not, however, to the statements of Gomara, with whose work
he is acquainted only at second hand, but to those of Cortes and of
Bernal Diaz himself! Thus, in every computation of the number of the
enemy's forces, or of the Indian allies who joined the Spaniards in
their contest with the Aztecs, Mr. Wilson "takes the liberty," to use
his own phrase, of "dropping" one or more ciphers from the amount. This
mode of adapting the narrative to his own conceptions he calls "reducing
it to reality." When Cortes--not Gomara, be it remembered--computes the
number of his allies at eighty thousand, Mr. Wilson says, "Let us drop
the thousands, and _assume_ eighty as the actual number. _We must do so
often._" When Cortes writes "thirty-five thousand," Mr. Wilson prefers
to say "three hundred or so." When Diaz writes "twelve thousand," Mr.
Wilson suggests that we should read "five hundred." Cortes says that he
caused a canal to be dug twelve _feet_ deep. Mr. Wilson, speaking as
if he had been an eye-witness, says the canal was only twelve _inches_
deep. In another place he writes, "Accordingly a force of thirteen
horse, two hundred foot, and three hundred--not thirty thousand--Indian
allies were sent to relieve that village"; merely leaving his readers to
the inference that the number placed between dashes is the one given by
Cortes. In a single instance, he admits the estimate of Bernal Diaz, who
puts the loss sustained by the Indians in a battle at eight hundred;
while Las Casas, whose corrections of other writers Mr. Wilson professes
to "vindicate," says the loss of the Indians on this occasion amounted
to thirty thousand. Las Casas also reckons the number of natives who
fell victims t