Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet never did I breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold.
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific – and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise -
Silent, upon a peak in Darien. – Keats.

Prescott’s classic and beautifully written work describes what Cortez and his men went on to do, and how it was that they came to destroy the empire of the Aztecs –