Note 1022 — Chapter V

Conquest of Mexico, i. 80, n. Of his Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, this historian says: “However good the motives of its author, we may regret that the book was ever written.... The author lent a willing ear to every tale of violence and rapine, and magnified the amount to a degree which borders on the ridiculous. The wild extravagance of his numerical estimates is of itself sufficient to shake confidence in the accuracy of his statements generally. Yet the naked truth was too startling in itself to demand the aid of exaggeration.” The historian truly says of himself, in his Preface to the work quoted: “I have not hesitated to expose in their strongest colors the excesses of the conquerors.”