Very High and Most Excellent Prince, may God, Our Lord, preserve the life and the very royal person and the very powerful state of Your Sacred Majesty, and augment it for long time with increase of many greater kingdoms and dominions, according as your royal heart may desire. From the town of Segura de la Frontera, of this New Spain, on the 30th October, 1520. Your Sacred Majesty's very humble servant and vassal, who kisses the very royal feet and hands of Your Highness.
Note.[1] — After this, the news arrived on the first of the month of March past from the said New Spain, of how the Spaniards had taken by force the great city of Temixtitan, in which more Indians had perished than did Jews in the destruction of Jerusalem when it was taken by Vespasian, and in it there was likewise a greater number of people than in the said Holy City. They found little treasure because the natives had thrown and submerged it in the waters; they took only two hundred thousand dollars, and the Spaniards remained well fortified in the said city, which at present has about fifteen hundred foot soldiers, and five hundred horsemen, and they have more than one hundred thousand friendly natives in their camp. These are great and strange things, and it is without doubt another world, and the sole desire to see it causes envy to us who are outside its borders. The news which we hold to be worthy of belief is up to the beginning of April, 1522. This present letter of relation was printed in the very noble and very loyal city of Seville by Jacob Cromberger, a German, on the 8th of November, 1522.
- ↑ This postscriptum was obviously not written by Cortes, but by some one who read his letter; it was added before the receipt of his third letter, and was printed with the first edition in 1522.
