SOURCE: A preface to Bernal Díaz del Castillo: Being Some Account of Him, Taken From His True History of the Conquest of New Spain, Dodd, Mead & Company, 1915, pp. vii-xiv.

In the following excerpt, Graham suggests that Díaz's sincerity, attention to detail, and appreciation for the common soldier should make his True History the most favored account of the conquest.

In this, my little sketch, I am not much concerned with this or that edition; but chiefly with the man. What I discern in [Díaz] is steadfastness, sincerity, and in the main an absence of the gross superstitions that in his time blinded so many of his contemporaries, though he was ardent in his faith. His style is nervous, and though occasionally involved, remains after so many hundred years a well of pure Castilian, into which when you let down a bucket, it comes up, filled...