CHAPTER IX
FROM CONQUEST TO INDEPENDENCE
"The art and beauty of historical composition," said Capt. Bernal Diaz del Castillo, a lieutenant of Cortez, "is to write the truth;" and from the year of our Lord one thousand five hundred and seventy-two, when, "in the residence of the royal court of audience," the Spanish historian finished his narrative, down to our own days, there has been only one story of the pictorial aspects of Mexico. The vivid and accurate description which is given in these pages is not surpassed for precision, for taste, for sympathy, by that of any earlier writer of all who may say with Mrs. Blake, as Bernal Diaz said of himself, "This is no history of distant nations, nor vain reveries: I relate that of which I was an eye-witness and not idle reports or hearsay;_for truth is sacred,"
But whoever undertakes to write of material Mexico, even though he can say with equal truth
