Bernal Diaz del Castillo; Being Some Account of Him (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1915. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... BERNAL DIAZ DEL CASTILLO CHAPTER I Bernal Diaz Del Castillo was born in the Castilian city of Medina del Campo in 1492, the very year of the discovery of America. His father was Don Francisco Diaz del Castillo, called, as his son informs us, el Galan (the Gallant), and his mother Dona Maria Diaz Rejon. The family came from the mountains of Burgos, where still stood their house in Aontonera del Valle de Toranzo when Bernal Diaz wrote his chronicle. The curious old city of Medina del Campo is situated in a vast brown plain. The sandy streets run out and lose themselves in the surrounding country, just as some rivers lose themselves in various mouths before they reach the sea. The great Castillo de la Mota, now ruinous, but once a favourite residence of the Catholic kings, and prison of Caesar Borgia, guards it upon a little hill. To-day, only a gipsy family feeds a few goats in its deserted courtyards, and the great keep stands up, deserted, and disintegrating in the sun. Far away towers La Sierra de los Credos, and just outside the town extends a wood of pines looking like green umbrellas growing in the sand. In the enormous and gaunt plaza still stands the house of Pedro Duefias, the great merchant who offended Charles v., that austere prince of light-horsemen, by his lavishness in entertainment and display. The house with its almenas and horseshoe doorway still remains, inside and out, much as when Duefias burnt the cinnamon in the great silver brasero, that so much scandalised the King. Although presumably it was not built when Bernal Diaz played with other brown, beadyeyed children in the great sandy square, he must have known many a mansion of the kind. As he grew up he must have talked with many soldiers returned from the New World. Medina, with its mediaev...