Note 134 — Chapter VI · THE VOYAGE. 1519.

Cortés, on coming up and being told of this, shouted, ‘Onward, companions! God is with us!’ Relacion, in Icazbalceta, Col. Doc., ii. 559-60. Gomara, who fervently adopts the story, states that the rider was one of the apostles, in the person of Morla. ‘Todos dixeron, que vieron por tres vezes al del cauallo rucio picado ... y que era Santiago nuestro patron. Fernando Cortés mas queria que fuesse san Pedro, su especial auogado ... aun tambien los Indios lo notaron.... De los prisioneros que se tomarõ se supo esto.’ Hist. Mex., 32-3. Pizarro y Orellana, Varones Ilvstres, 72-3, gives arguments to show that it could have been none other than Santiago, as the patron of Spaniards. After a struggle with his pious fears, Bernal Diaz ventures to observe that Gomara may be right, but ‘I, unworthy sinner, was not graced to see either of those glorious apostles.’ Testimony was taken about the battle, and had this occurred it would have been spoken of. ‘I say that our victory was by the hand of our Lord Jesus Christ, for in that battle the Indians were so numerous that they could have buried us with handfuls of earth.’ Hist. Verdad., 22-3. Las Casas scouts the story as a fabrication of Cortés, written down by ‘his servant Gomara,’ in ‘his false history.’ Hist. Ind., iv. 477.