CONQUISTADORS

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27664, 21 May 1955, Page 3

CONQUISTADORS

Car t« s and Montcsuma. By Maurice Collis. Faber and Faber. 251 pp. Prescott s “Conquest of Mexico” a popular book with our greatgrandfathers. as is proved by the freT th which copies of it are round today on the shelves of secondhand booksellers. So well did the American historian tell the amazing swry of the conquest of a mighty ema handful of adventurers that aitoough this work appeared as long ago as 1843, it has never been told again on the same scale. Prescott’s hero was, of course, Hernando Cortes, toe greatest of the conquistadors. A • •\ ears ?8° the distinguished Spanish historian Senor de MadSriaga j biography of Cortes in which ne tried to do justice to his Mexican opponents. .Now comes Mr Maurice Collis, well known for his popular writings on Burma, Siam, and China, to give us a new study of the contrasting characters and fortunes of the Spanish soldier and the last native king of Mexico. He has no fresh facts to reveal (our knowledge of the conquest is drawn almost wholly from “The True History of the Conquest of Mexico,” written in 1568 in his old age by Bernal Diaz, who had taken part in the expedition nearly half a century before), but he is anxious to reinterpret the episode in the light of our now fuller understanding of the ways of thought and customs of ancient Mexico. Mr Collis can indeed say little in defence of its horrible religion, whose savage gods required a constant flow of human sacrifices, but he paints a more intelligible and sympathetic nicture of the strange, unhappy Montesuma, forced to choose between his country and his faith and killed at last by his own people. Mr Collis’s treatment perhaps lacks that sureness of touch which marked bis earlier books on the more familiar world of the Far East, but his gift of clear and graceful narrative is still in evidence and his admirers will as readily accept him as a delightful guide in Mexico as they have done in Peking or Rangoon.

TALKING TO ANIMALS, by Barbara Woodhouse (Faber. 208 pp.), tells of Mrs Woodhouse’s experiences in making animals friendly. She appears • u considerable gifts in dealing with the more domestic types of animals at any rate, and she gives some insight into her methods here. She has ®. Pteasantly discursive style that has note intimacy and informality for her subject. f ■- ’ ■