Kate Stephens

“ In the past we have often been told that the Conquest of Mexico was a most glorious exploit, due wholly to an absolutist, a poser of quasi omniscient intellect and callous emotion, a leader driving subordinated soldiers. The following pages show, rather, a human Cortes—able, untiringly active in mind and body, gently intimate and comrade-like of heart, subtle in speech, but ardent, imaginative and ambitious enough to grasp opportunities and mould them to his own advantage. ”

“ To us of to-day Bernal Diaz del Castillo is not "vulgar." Profounder sentiments strengthen our vision. To our thinking Diaz' work is that of a writer of notable stature—of a spirit as sincere as his body was enduring, who, fifty years after he had had no mean part in one of the greatest expeditions known to mankind, himself wrote with astounding vizualizing power of what he and his comrades did and suffered. ”

“ Within the last quarter of a century, however, the True History—that of the old Conquistador himself, preserved in the archives of Guatemala where he finally settled after the Conquest—the True History has had the excellent fortune of an edition brought out in Mexico through the initiation, and under the direction, of Señor Don Genaro García ”