which indicated love for pleasure and generous liberality.[1]
Alonso de Ávila, the third of Grijalva's brave lieutenants, had also a pleasant face and liberal disposition, combined with good reasoning power, but was altogether too loud-spoken and argumentative, and had an overbearing manner that created many enemies. He was about thirty-three years of age. Cristóbal de Olid, a year his junior, was a well formed, strong-limbed man, with wide shoulders and a somewhat fair complexion. Despite the peculiarity of a groove in the lower lip, which gave it the appearance of being split, the face was most attractive, and the powerful voice helped to bear him out as a good talker. While lacking in sincerity and depth of thought, and being little fit for the council, he possessed qualities which, in connection with great bravery and determination, made him an admirable executive officer; but an ambition to command began to assert itself, and directed by evil influence it brought about his fall a few years later. Bernal Diaz calls him a very Hector in combat, and possessing, among other good qualities, that of being liberal; on the whole an excellent man, though unfit to be a leader.[2] The youngest of the captains, the most worshipful and the most lovable, was Gonzalo de Sandoval, an hidalgo of only twenty-two years, from Cortés' own town, the son of a fortress commandant, but with merely a rudimentary educa-
- ↑ Montejo, Memorial al Emp., 1545, in Cent. Amer., 1545-55, MS. 130. 'Fué uno de aquellos mílites que passaron á estas partes . . . mill é quinientos y catorçe, é aquel mesmo año . . . fuésse de la Tierra-Firma . . . é passóse á la isla de Cuba.' Oviedo, iii. 217.
- ↑ See Hist. Cent. Am., this series, i., 524-32. 'Era estremado varon, mas no era para mandar, sino para ser mãdado, y era de edad de treinta y seis años, natural de cerca de Baezad Linares . . . . Tenia otras buenas codiciones, de ser franco.' Bernal Diaz, Hist. Verdad., 177. 'Era vn Hector en el esfuerço, para combatir persona por persona.' Id., 240. Natural que fue de Vbeda ò de Linares.' Id., 241 'Da Baeza nell' Andaluzia. Era membruto, ombroso, e doppio.' Clavigero, Storia Mess., iii. 8. 'D'une laideur extrême; sa duplicité et sa fourberie le rendaient un homme peu sur,' says Brasseur de Bourbourg, Hist. Nat. Civ., iv. 53, with his not unusual hasty elaboration. Portrait in Prescott's Mex. (Mex. 1844), i. 421; also in Zamacois, Hist. Méj., iv. 254.
