THE ROMANCE OF MEXICO
turning to her Spanish friends, "my mother knew not what she did when she sold me to the traders. I forgive her freely."
To her mother she said, "God has been very gracious to me in making me become a Christian. . . . If I had been made the chieftainess of as many provinces as there are in Mexico, the only use I could make of this power would be to do more service to my Lord Cortés." Bernal Diaz, who was present, declares, "All these things I heard, and I swear to it. Amen."
Sometime during this expedition Marina was married to a Spanish cavalier, and given large estates in her native province, so Cortés lost the beautiful interpreter, without whose aid he could hardly have made his great conquest.
The march to Honduras, which began so brightly through friendly and open countries, soon became more and more difficult, and indeed disastrous. Through dense, untrodden forests, over treacherous marshes, across wide, unfordable rivers and stony mountains, the Spaniards and Indians struggled, starving and exhausted.
In this terrible extremity an Indian informed Cortés that Guatemozin and the other Aztec chiefs were plotting to fall on the Spaniards in some difficult pass where cannon and horse would be useless. They intended, said the informer, to kill every Spaniard, and then return to Mexico and attempt to reconquer their city. The man produced a paper on which were painted the faces of all the Aztec lords in the conspiracy. According to Diaz,
