THE MARCH OF HERNANDO CORTÉS FROM MEXICO TO HONDURAS

The march of Hernando Cortés from Mexico to Honduras was not the least important exploit of that great Captain, but it has received comparatively little attention at the hands of historians. Prescott devotes a few pages to it, but makes no attempt to follow it in detail ; he states in a note: “I have examined some of the most ancient maps of the country by Spanish, French, and Dutch cosmographers in order to determine the route of Cortés… I can detect on them only four or five of the places indicated by the General.”

Don Pascual de Gayangos, in an Introduction to his translation of the Carta Quinta, the Fifth Letter of Cortés to the Emperor Charles V, says that “few are the indications — and those very slight — of the route they (the Spaniards) followed,” and he makes no attempt to define it. However, a careful comparison of the only two accounts of the march, that by Cortés himself in the Carta Quinta, and that given by Bernal Diaz, and some personal knowledge of the country traversed, makes it possible to trace the line of march for a considerable part of the way with some hope of accuracy.

Cortés left the City of Mexico on the 12th October, 1524. The Carta Quinta was written on his return to the City, and is dated 3rd September, 1526. Bernal Diaz wrote his account of the march about 1566, when he was an old man, and although he possessed a wonderfully retentive memory, it is safer to trust for all details to the account written by Cortés so soon after the events.