Note 189 — Chapter II
Reading edition
[“No general interest would attach to the private undertakings of Cortés, if the sole object of them had been the aggrandizement of his own fortune. But they were in fact the germs of what are now the most important branches of the national wealth; and they prove the grandeur of those views which in the times of the Conquest gave an impulse to whatever promised to contribute to the prosperity of the country.” Alaman, Disertaciones históricas, tom. ii. p. 63.]