[895] The printed “Relaciones” may be found in Barcia, “Historiadores Primitivos de las Indias Occidentales,” (Madrid, 1749, 3 tom., folio,)—a collection printed after its editor’s death and very ill arranged. Barcia was a man of literary distinction, much employed in affairs of state, and one of the founders of the Spanish Academy. He died in 1743. (Baena, Hijos de Madrid, Tom. I. p. 106.) For the last and unpublished “Relacion” of Cortés, as well as for his unpublished letters, I am indebted to my friend Mr. Prescott, who has so well used them in his “Conquest of Mexico.”

[896] “The first worthy of being so called,” says Muñoz, Hist. del Nuevo Mundo, Madrid, 1793, folio, p. xviii.

[897] The two works of Gomara may be well consulted in Barcia, “Historiadores Primitivos,” Tom. II., which they fill. They were first printed in 1553, and though, as Antonio says, (Bib. Nov., Tom. I. p. 437,) they were forbidden to be either reprinted or read, four editions of them appeared before the end of the century.

[898] “About this first going of Cortés as captain on this expedition, the ecclesiastic Gomara tells many things grossly untrue in his history, as might be expected from a man who neither saw nor heard any thing about them, except what Fernando Cortés told him and gave him in writing; Gomara being his chaplain and servant, after he was made Marquis and returned to Spain the last time.” Las Casas, (Historia de las Indias, Parte III. c. 113, MS.,) a prejudiced witness, but, on a point of fact within his own knowledge, one to be believed.

[899] See “Historia Verdadera de la Conquista de la Nueva España, por el Capitan Bernal Diaz del Castillo, uno de los Conquistadores,” Madrid, 1632, folio, cap. 211.

[900] He says he was in one hundred and nineteen battles (f. 254. d); that is, I suppose, fights of all kinds.

[901] It was not printed till long afterwards, and was then dedicated to Philip IV. Some of its details are quite ridiculous. He gives even a list of the individual horses that were used on the great expedition of Cortés, and often describes the separate qualities of a favorite charger as carefully as he does those of his rider.

[902] “Yo naci año de 1478,” he says, in his “Quinquagenas,” when noticing Pedro Fernandez de Córdoba; and he more than once speaks of himself as a native of Madrid. He says, too, expressly, that he was present at the surrender of Granada, and that he saw Columbus at Barcelona, on his first return from America in 1493. Quinquagenas, MS.

[903] “Veedor de las Fundiciones de Oro,” he describes himself in the Proemio of his work presented to Charles V. in 1525 (Barcia, Tom. I.); and long afterwards, in the opening of Book XLVII. of his Historias, MS., he still speaks of himself as holding the same office.

[904] I do not feel sure that Antonio is not mistaken in ascribing to Oviedo a separate life of Cardinal Ximenes, because the life contained in the “Quinquagenas” is so ample; but the Chronicles of Ferdinand and Isabella, and Charles V., are alluded to by Oviedo himself in the Proemio to Charles V. Neither has ever been printed.

[905] He calls it, in his letter to the Emperor, at the end of the “Sumario” in 1525, “La General y Natural Historia de las Indias, que de mi mano tengo escrita”;—in the Introduction to Lib. XXXIII. he says, “En treinta y quatro años que ha que estoy en estas partes”;—and in the ninth chapter, which ends Lib. XXXIV., we have an event recorded with the date of 1548;—so that, for these three-and-twenty years, he was certainly employed, more or less, on this great work. But at the end of Book XXXVII. he says, “Y esto baste quanto a este breve libro del numero treinta y siete, hasta que el tiempo nos avise de otras cosas que en el se acrescientan”; from which I infer that he kept each book, or each large division of his work, open for additions, as long as he lived, and therefore that parts of it may have been written as late as 1557.

[906] “I have royal orders that the governors should send me a relation of whatever I shall touch in the affairs of their governments, for this History.” (Lib. XXXIII., Introd., MS.) I apprehend, Oviedo was the first authorized Chronicler of the New World, an office which was at one period better paid than any other similar office in the kingdom, and was held, at different times, by Herrera, Tamayo, Solís, and other writers of distinction. It ceased, I believe, with the creation of the Academy of History.

[907] “We owe much to those who give us notice of what we have not seen or known ourselves; as I am now indebted to a remarkable and learned man, of the illustrious Senate of Venice, called Secretary Juan Bautista Ramusio, who, hearing that I was inclined to the things of which I here treat, has, without knowing me personally, sought me for his friend and communicated with me by letters, sending me a new geography,” etc. Lib. XXXVIII., MS.

[908] As a specimen of his manner, I add the following account of Almagro, one of the early adventurers in Peru, whom the Pizarros put to death in Cuzco, after they had obtained uncontrolled power there. “Therefore hear and read all the authors you may, and compare, one by one, whatever they relate, that all men, not kings, have freely given away, and you shall surely see how there is none that can equal Almagro in this matter, and how none can be compared to him; for kings, indeed, may give and know how to give whatever pleaseth them, both cities and lands, and lordships, and other great gifts; but that a man whom yesterday we saw so poor, that all he possessed was a very small matter, should have a spirit sufficient for what I have related,—I hold it to be so great a thing, that I know not the like of it in our own or any other time. For I myself saw, when his companion, Pizarro, came from Spain, and brought with him that body of three hundred men to Panamá, that, if Almagro had not received them and shown them so much free hospitality with so generous a spirit, few or none of them could have escaped alive; for the land was filled with disease, and the means of living were so dear, that a bushel of maize was worth two or three pesos, and an arroba of wine six or seven gold pieces. To all of them he was a father, and a brother, and a true friend; for inasmuch as it is pleasant and grateful to some men to make gain, and to heap up and to gather together moneys and estates, even so much and more pleasant was it to him to share with others and to give away; so that the day when he gave nothing, he accounted it for a day lost. And in his very face you might see the pleasure and true delight he felt when he found occasion to help him who had need. And since, after so long a fellowship and friendship as there was between these two great leaders, from the days when their companions were few and their means small, till they saw themselves full of wealth and strength, there hath at last come forth so much discord, scandal, and death, well must it appear matter of wonder even to those who shall but hear of it, and much more to us, who knew them in their low estate, and have no less borne witness to their greatness and prosperity.” (General y Natural Historia de las Indias, Lib. XLVII., MS.) Much of it is, like the preceding passage, in the true, old, rambling, moralizing, chronicling vein.

[909] “En este que estamos de 1545.” Quinquagenas, MS., El Cardinal Cisneros.

[910] As in the Dialogue on Juan de Silva, Conde de Cifuentes, he says, “En este año en que estamos 1550”; and in the Dialogue on Mendoza, Duke of Infantado, he uses the same words, as he does again in that on Pedro Fernandez de Córdova. There is an excellent note on Oviedo, in Vol. I. p. 112 of the American ed. of “Ferdinand and Isabella,” by my friend Mr. Prescott, to whom I am indebted for the manuscript of the Quinquagenas, as well as of the Historia.

[911] There is a valuable life of Las Casas in Quintana, “Vidas de Españoles Célebres” (Madrid, 1833, 12mo, Tom. III. pp. 255-510). The seventh article in the Appendix, concerning the connection of Las Casas with the slave-trade, will be read with particular interest; because, by materials drawn from unpublished documents of unquestionable authenticity, it makes it certain, that, although at one time Las Casas favored what had been begun earlier,—the transportation of negroes to the West Indies, in order to relieve the Indians,—as other good men in his time favored it, he did so under the impression, that, according to the law of nations, the negroes thus brought to America were both rightful captives taken by the Portuguese in war and rightful slaves. But afterwards he changed his mind on the subject. He declared “the captivity of the negroes to be as unjust as that of the Indians,”—“ser tan injusto el cautiverio de los negros como el de los Indios,”—and even expressed a fear, that, though he had fallen into the error of favoring the importation of black slaves into America from ignorance and good-will, he might, after all, fail to stand excused for it before the Divine Justice. Quintana, Tom. III. p. 471.

[912] Quintana, Españoles Célebres, Tom. III. p. 321.

[913] Quintana (p. 413, note) doubts when this famous treatise was written; but Las Casas himself says, in the opening of his “Brevísima Relacion,” that it was written in 1542.

[914] This important tract continued long to be printed separately, both at home and abroad. I use a copy of it in double columns, Spanish and Italian, Venice, 1643, 12mo; but, like the rest, the Brevísima Relacion may be consulted in an edition of the Works of Las Casas by Llorente, which appeared at Paris in 1822, in 2 vols. 8vo, in the original Spanish, almost at the same time with his translation of them into French. It should be noticed, perhaps, that Llorente’s version is not always strict, and that the two new treatises he imputes to Las Casas, as well as the one on the Authority of Kings, are not absolutely proved to be his.

The translation referred to above appeared, in fact, the same year, and at the end of it an “Apologie de Las Casas,” by Grégoire, with letters of Funes and Mier, and notes of Llorente to sustain it,—all to defend Las Casas on the subject of the slave-trade; but Quintana, as we have seen, has gone to the original documents, and leaves no doubt, both that Las Casas once favored it, and that he altered his mind afterwards.

[915] “Todo esto me dixo el mismo Cortés con otras cosas cerca dello, despues de Marques, en la villa de Monçon, estando alli celebrando cortes el Emperador, año de mil y quinientos y quarenta y dos, riendo y mofando con estas formales palabras, a la mi fé andubé por alli como un gentil cosario.” (Historia General de las Indias, Lib. III. c. 115, MS.) It may be worth noting, that 1542, the year when Cortés made this scandalous speech, was the year in which Las Casas wrote his Brevísima Relacion.

[916] For a notice of all the works of Las Casas, see Quintana, Vidas, Tom. III. pp. 507-510.

[917] The two works of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, namely, his “Naufragios” and his “Comentarios y Sucesos de su Gobierno en el Rio de la Plata,” were first printed in 1555, and are to be found in Barcia, Historiadores Primitivos, Tom. I.

[918] The work of Francisco de Xerez, “Conquista de Peru,” written by order of Francisco Pizarro, was first published in 1547, and is to be found in Ramusio, (Venezia, ed. Giunti, folio, Tom. III.,) and in Barcia’s collection (Tom. III.). It ends with some poor verses in defence of himself.

[919] “Historia del Descubrimiento y Conquista del Peru,” first printed in 1555, and several times since. It is in Barcia, Tom. III., and was translated into Italian by Ulloa. Çarate was sent out by Charles V. to examine into the state of the revenues of Peru, and brings down his accounts as late as the overthrow of Gonzalo Pizarro. See an excellent notice of Çarate at the end of Mr. Prescott’s last chapter on the Conquest of Peru.