THE OPEN GATE
they declared, "from a delicious land where roam the happy spirits of your departed ancestors. They send us to invite you to come and share their bliss." Eagerly the confiding people listened to the fairy tale, and forty thousand gladly followed the beneficent strangers. Poor deluded creatures! They hoped for heaven: in Hispaniola they found a veritable hell.
Amid such scenes of treachery and violence matured the character of Hernando Cortés. Who can wonder that with courage and self-reliance he learnt also something of the unscrupulous greed and callous cruelty so characteristic of his race and age. He was, however, of too gallant and enterprising a spirit to find satisfaction in mere slave-driving, and he only awaited an opportunity to exchange his monotonous life for one of glory and adventure. A new governor, eager to promote all schemes of discovery and conquest, now ruled in Hispaniola, for Diego Columbus, the son of the great Admiral, had succeeded, after years of striving, in ousting his father's old enemy, Ovando. In 1511, when he called for volunteers to aid in the conquest of the neighbouring isle of Cuba, Hernando Cortés, with many other restless youths, at once offered his services.
Don Diego Velasquez, a soldier of rank and fortune, was given command of the expedition. An old chronicler describes this captain, who was to set young Cortés on the path to glory, as "possessed of considerable experience in military affairs, having served seventeen years in the European wars; as honest, illustrious by his lineage and reputation,
