"TANKS" USED BY CORTES

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2961, 27 December 1916, Page 3

"TANKS" USED BY CORTES

9 . The following is an extract from Prescott's "Conquest of Mexico," book v, chapter 2: — For somo days his (Cortes') workmen had been employed in constructing a military machine of his own invention. It . . . consisted of a tower made of light beams' and planks, having two chambers, one over the other. Theso were to be filled with musketeers, and tho sides were provided with loopholes, through which a fire could bo kept up on tho enemy. Tho great adva'ntago proposed by this contrivance was to afford a defenco to tho troops against the missiles hurled from the terraces. Theso machines, threo of which were made, rested on rollers, and were provided with strong ropes, by which they were to be dragged along tho streets by the Tlascalan auxiliaries. . The Mexicans gazed with astonishment on tho warlike machines, and as

tho rolling fortresses advanced, belching forth firo and smoko from their entrails, the enemy, incapable of making an impression on those within, fell back in dismay. So tho year 1520 in tho New AVorld anticipated 1916 in tho Old, in this, as in other ways. For, asks Mr. C. B. Knight, of York, in a letter to the

"Yorkshire Post," was not Montezuma regularly advised of tho doings of the Spaniards by illustrated news-sheets,' and did hot Pizarro find in Peru a system of State Socialism in full operation wonderfully like tho Sovereign Remedy of tho Twentieth Century?