CHAPTER XII.
THE PONCE DE LEON EPISODE
1526.
Altamirano Sent to Bring Cortés — His Arrival at Medellin — Demonstrative Reception — Reform Measures — A Juez de Residencia Sent to New Spain — Ponce de Leon and his Instructions — How Cortés Received the Blow — The Banquet — A Scheming Friar — Ponce de Leon Assumes the Government — The Residencia of Cortés — Death of Ponce de Leon — Aguilar Succeeds Him — His Unfitness and Death.
However promising the new administration might have been, it could never be regarded even by the most confident of the adherents of Cortés as anything but temporary. Cortés alone would be able to restore order and save the country. The efforts to accomplish his return were therefore continued, and while some wrote to Pedro de Alvarado to go in search of him, others persuaded to the same end Father Diego Altamirano, cousin of the great captain, and a man of sagacity, who had also followed the profession of arms. Family interests did much to prevail upon the cousin, and chartering a vessel at Medellin he reached Honduras, there to find his kinsman absorbed in glowing visions of conquest. Kindly, yet firmly, he remonstrated with him for abandoning actual possessions and neglecting his duty to family, friends, and sovereign, for shadowy gains. Interference with governments already conferred on others would surely meet with condemnation, and further injure his tottering interests at court. He had already achieved as conqueror of Mexico a reputation far above that of any man in America, and
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