Calavar; or, The Knight of The Conquest, A Romance of Mexico

The victory so marvellously gained, removed the last obstruction from the path of the Spaniards. The ensuing day beheld them entering the territories of their allies; and, in fo...

Don Amador de Leste was interrupted in the agreeable duty (the last to be performed in the little caravel,) of inquiring into the health and condition of his war-horse, Fogoso,...

In the year of Grace fifteen hundred and twenty, upon a day in the month of May thereof, the sun rose over the islands of the new deep, and the mountains that divided it from an...

The cavalier pondered, in perplexity, over the words of Abdalla; and, the longer he reflected, the more he began to lament his captivity, and doubt the wisdom of his gage.

To those invaders who had not yet witnessed with their own eyes the peculiar wonders of the interior, the approach to Tlascala was full of surprise and interest. As the sun sank...

The same solitude, which had covered the city the preceding evening, now seemed again to invest it. Corses were here and there strown in the street, as of fugitives dying in the...

As the secretary anticipated, the tracks of the reinforcement were plainly discernible over the sandy downs and by the margins of the pestilent fens, which gave an air of desola...

The day that followed after the flight of Abdoul-al-Sidi, beheld the army of Cortes crossing that ridge which extends like a mighty curtain, between the great volcano and the ru...

The situation of the Spaniards, at that moment, though sufficiently frightful to every one, was yet known, in all its horrors, only to the leaders of the van. As hope is ever in...

We draw a curtain over the events of the first five days of flight, wherein the miserable fugitives, contending, at once, with fatigue, famine, and unrelenting foes, stole by ni...

The dancers had fled from the terrace; the fire had smouldered away; but in the light of the moon, which shed a far lovelier radiance, Don Amador, as he was hurried to the steps...

This discourse of the novice, together with the magical unction of the wound, occupied so much time, that when it was finished, the storm had in a great measure passed away; and...

The sufferings of the Spaniards in the streets, when returning from the pyramid, had admonished the general of the necessity of devising some plan of protection against those ci...

Passing the night in a little hamlet on the mountain side, the army was prepared, at the dawn of the following day, to resume its march. But the events of this march being varie...

At midnight, the Mexican spy, looking over the broken wall, beheld in the court-yard which it environed, a scene of singular devotion;--or rather he caught with his ears--for th...

The midday sun was illuminating the peaks, and darting its beams into the narrowest and darkest ravines of these mountains, when Don Hernan, at the head of his little army, rode...

From a deep slumber, that seemed, indeed, death, for it was dreamless, the cavalier, at last, awoke, somewhat confused, but no longer delirious; and, though greatly enfeebled, e...

At the signal of the admiral, an officer made his appearance, received certain commands, the most agreeable of which to the young cavalier were those in reference to his own lib...

Don Amador sought out the apartment of his kinsman, with a troubled heart. A deep dejection, in part the effect of extreme fatigue, but caused more by the strange and melancholy...

The cavalier was roused from his slumbers by a cause at first incomprehensible. The moonlight had vanished from the prison, and deep obscurity had succeeded; but in the little l...

Meantime the reappearance of the barbarians seemed to cut off the last hope of escape from Amador and his companion; but the magician, answering the cavalier's sullen look of de...

At the earliest dawn, Don Amador arose from his couch, refreshed, but not reanimated, by slumber. An oppressive gloom lay at his heart, with the feeling of physical weight; and...

The morn, which by this time was breaking over the sea, was ushered in with a thousand sounds of triumph; and the drums of the vanquished rolled in concert with the trumpets of...

Two or three hours before sunset, the sleepers were roused to renew their march. Horses were saddled and armour buckled, and Don Amador de Leste mounted his steed with great sat...

When the boy returned, bearing a bundle of garments, and two or three such crests as were worn by the nobler Mexicans, in time of war, the cavalier had more than half-armed hims...

In the prosecution of his purpose, our historian, the worthy Don Cristobal Ixtlilxochitl, though ever adhering to his 'neglected cavaliers' with a generous constancy, is sometim...

While he still talked with the Morisco, Don Amador was able to cast his eyes about him, and to perceive on either side a great multitude of low houses of wickered cane, which se...

A history of moral epidemics, drawn up by a philosophic pen, would add much to our knowledge of the mysteries of human character and human power, as well as of the probable cont...

The soldiers of Alvarado differed in no wise from those veterans whom Don Amador had found standing to their arms on the banks of the River of Canoes; only that they presented,...

In his sleep, the wounded cavalier was no longer a captive. Memory and imagination, acting together, bore him to the shores of the Mediterranean; and as he trode the smooth beac...

In great grief and consternation of mind, the cavaliers carried the king to his apartments, and added their own sharp regrets to the tears of his children, when the surgeon pron...

On the following morning, it was known to all the garrison, that they were, at night, to depart from Tenochtitlan. The joy, however, that might have followed the announcement, w...

Motion is the life of the sea: the surge dashes along in its course, while the watery particles that gave it bulk and form, remain in their place to renew and continue the comin...

What Alvarado had reported of Don Amador was true. The neophyte averred, that, dead or alive,--a spectre or a creature of flesh and blood,--the steed, bestridden by the sable ph...

Lighted not more by the torch at his feet than by the flames that crested the distant mountain, the Moorish boy struck the lute with a skilful touch, whispered, rather than wail...

The first thought of the young cavalier was, that Don Gabriel had been basely and murderously struck by some felon hand; an apprehension of which he was, in part, immediately re...

When Don Amador returned to the chamber, he was rejoiced to find his kinsman asleep, and not offended that the faithful Marco and Baltasar were both nodding, as they sat at his...

Amador surveyed the prisoner, though somewhat indifferently. He was, in figure and age, very much such a man as Baltasar, but in other respects very dissimilar. His face was wan...

In a low but spacious apartment, the walls and floor of which were both covered with mats, the neophyte found Don Hernan, attended by Sandoval and one or two other cavaliers, bu...

The sun was declining fast, when the travellers made their way to the camp of Cortes. The River of Canoes ran through a fertile valley; but this was of no great extent, and towa...

As the cavalier sprang among his countrymen almost fainting with exhaustion, he loosened, with as much discretion as dexterity, the knot of the tilmatli, and dropped it to the e...

The rapture with which Don Amador de Leste exchanged the confined decks of the caravel for the boundless sands of Ulua, and these again for the back of his impatient steed, was...

At midday, the squadron, after having accomplished more than half the journey, halted for rest and refreshment on the banks of a little river, under the shade of pleasant trees....

Hard by to the town of Zempoala ran a little brook, coursing through agreeable meadows, and here and there skirted by green forests. In a wood that overshadowed this current,--b...

The moon had now risen, and was mingling her lustre with the blaze of the volcano. The shouts of revelry came less frequently from the city, and, one by one, the torches vanishe...

The sun had not yet set, when the ray, stealing through the vapours that gathered among the distant peaks, beheld the senor Cortes and his little army crossing the River of Cano...

"That day, then," muttered Amador, "is a blank in my existence! and very grievous it is, to think that so great a space of so short a period as life, should be lost in a stony l...

The distance between the great temple and the palace of Axajacatl was by no means great; though Cortes, for the purpose of prying into many streets, had led his followers agains...

Two hours after night-fall, and while the Spaniards were still engaged in close battle with the besiegers, who, this night, seemed as if their rage was never to be appeased, the...

The cannoniers, moved by this new feeling, discharged their last volley with good will, and, at the same moment, the crossbowmen and musketeers shot off their pieces from the wa...

When Don Amador found himself alone in the prison with Fabueno; with no other prospect before him than that of remaining therein till it might please the stars to throw open the...

While these scenes of blood were passing in the centre of the army, and a hideous mystery concealed the fate of the rear, the condition of the advanced guard, though not altoget...

"Didst thou observe, brother henchman," said Lazaro, as, after having completed his meal, and taken good note of the tethers of the horses, he threw himself on the ground by the...

When Don Amador fled from the side of Calavar, the instinct of his vengeance carried him to the spot where it seemed most likely to be gratified. The chief tower, as well as the...

To the surprise, and much also to the dissatisfaction, of Don Amador, the noon-day sun still found him struggling, with his companions, among the rocks and forests. It seemed to...

After much search and persuasion, a surgeon was found and induced to visit the knight. He despatched his questions almost in a word, for he was a fighting Bachelor, and burned w...

While these occurrences were transpiring, Don Amador de Leste, in search of the knight, had rambled through the streets, and following, very naturally, the only path with which...

Thousands of infuriated and exulting savages had, in the meanwhile, landed from their canoes at the second ditch, raised their cries of triumph over the abandoned artillery, and...

The neophyte had been informed by his friend De Morla, as a proof of the degree of civilization reached by the Mexicans, that their armies were formed with method, and as regula...

During the whole time of the march from Tlascala to Cholula, an unusual gloom lay upon the spirits of Calavar; and so great was his abstraction, that, though pursuing his way wi...

Whether it was that this attack was caused by an ebullition of popular fury, which yielded to some mysterious and religious revulsion of feeling, or whether, indeed, the leaders...

It was late in the night; a horizontal moon flung the long shadows of the houses over the wide streets of Cholula, when the knight Calavar, wrapped in his black mantle, strode a...

The fate of Don Amador de Leste, though so darkly written in the hearts of his companions, was not yet brought to a close. Some of his late friends deemed only that he had been...

Gloom and fear still beset the garrison at the palace of Axajacatl; and the mutiny of soldiers, and fierce feuds among the cavaliers, were added to other circumstances of distre...

A certain degree of monotony prevails among all the vicissitudes of life, and even the most exciting events fail, after a time, to interest. A paucity of incidents will not much...