Editorial Notes

A. Cieza de Leon.—It does not seem desirable to divide the bibliographical record of Cieza de Leon between the present and the first volume. His work was separated into four parts,—the first relating to the geography and description of Peru; the second, to the period of the Incas; the third, to the Spanish Conquest; the fourth, to the civil wars of the conquerors. The fate of each part has been distinct.

Part I. Prescott (Peru, vol. ii. p. 306) speaks of this as more properly an itinerary or geography of Peru, presenting the country in its moral and physical relations as it appeared to the eye of the conquerors; and not many of them, it is probable, were so impressed as Cieza de Leon was with the grandeur of the cordilleras. This, as Parte primera de la chronica del Peru, was published in folio at Seville, in 1553. In Rich’s time (1832) it was worth £5 5s. It was reprinted the next year (1554) at Antwerp in two distinct editions. One, La chronica del Peru, in duodecimo, has the imprint of Nucio; the other, likewise in duodecimo, is printed in an inferior manner, and sometimes has the name of Bellero, and sometimes that of Steelsio, as publisher. This last edition has the larger title, Parte primera de la chronica del Peru, etc., and was the one used by Prescott, and followed by Markham in the translation, Travels of Cieza de Leon, published by the Hakluyt Society in 1864.

In 1555 an Italian translation, La prima parte de la cronica del ... Peru, appeared at Rome, made by Agostino Cravaliz, or Augustino di Gravalis. A second edition—La prima parte dell’istorie del Peru—appeared the next year (1556) at Rome, and is found with the names of two different publishers.

At Venice, in 1560, appeared the Cronica del gran regno del Peru. This makes a work of which the first volume is a reprint of Gravaliz’ version of Cieza, and volumes ii. and iii. contain an Italian version of Gomara in continuation offered by the same publisher, Ziletti, under the title, La seconda, terza parte delle historie dell India.

The English translation of Stevens (The Seventeen Years’ Travels of Peter de Cieza through the mighty Kingdom of Peru and the large Provinces of Cartagena and Popayan in South America, from the City of Panama on the Isthmus to the Frontiers of Chile) was printed at London in 1709, and appeared both separately and as a part of his collection of Voyages. It gives only ninety-four of the one hundred and nineteen chapters.

Part II. Rich, though he had heard of this part, supposed it to have disappeared; and it is spoken of as missing by Markham in 1864, and by Harrisse in his Bibl. Amer. Vet. (p. 319). The manuscript of it was meanwhile in the Escurial, preserved in a bad copy made about the middle or end of the sixteenth century; but it is deficient in chapters i. and ii. and in part of chapter iii. Another manuscript copy not well done is in the Academy of History at Madrid. Lord Kingsborough had a copy, and from this Rich had a fifth copy made, which was used by Prescott; but it does not appear that any of these students suspected it to be the second part of Cieza de Leon. Prescott, supposing it to be written by the president of the Council of the Indies, Sarmiento, instead of for that officer, ascribed it to him; but Kirk, Prescott’s editor (Peru, vol. ii. p. 308), has recognized its identity, which Dr. Manuel Gonzales de la Rosa established when he edited the Escurial manuscript in 1873. This edition, though wholly printed in London, has not been made public. Following another transcript, and correcting the spelling, etc., Márcos Jiménez de la Espada printed it at Madrid in 1880 as vol. v. of the Biblioteca Hispano-Ultramarina. An English translation of it was made by Mr. Markham, and published by the Hakluyt Society in 1883.

Part III. Markham reports that Espada says that this part is in existence, but inaccessible.

Part IV. Espada is cited as asserting that books i. and ii. of this part are in existence, but inaccessible.

A manuscript of book iii. is in the Royal Library at Madrid, in handwriting of the middle of the sixteenth century. It covers the period from the appointment of Blasco Nuñez as viceroy in 1543 to a period just previous to Gasca’s departure from Panamá for Peru in 1547. A copy of this manuscript, belonging to Uguina, passed to Ternaux, thence to Rich, who sold it for £600 to Mr. Lenox; and it is now in the Lenox Library.

It has since been included under Espada’s editing in the Biblioteca Hispano-Ultramarina, and was published at Madrid in 1877 as Tercero libro de las Guerras Civiles del Peru.

Books iv. (war of Huarina) and v. (war of Xaquixaguana), and two appended commentaries on events from the founding of the Audiencia to the departure of the president, and on events extending to the arrival of the viceroy Mendoza, are not known to exist, though Cieza refers to them as written. These would complete the fourth part, and end the work.

What we know of Cieza is mainly derived from himself and the brief notice in Antonio’s Bibliotheca Hispana Nova (Madrid, 1788). The writer of the foregoing chapter gives an account of Cieza’s career, as well as it could be made out, in his translation of the Travels; but he supplements that story in the introduction to his version of Part II.

B. Garcilasso de la Vega.—The Primera parte de los Commentarios reales seems to have been printed—according to the colophon at Lisbon—in 1608, but to have been published in 1609. It has incidental notices of Spanish-American history, though concerned mainly with chronicles of the Incas.

The second part, called Historia General del Peru, was printed at Cordova in 1616, though most copies are dated 1617. The titles of the two dates slightly vary. This volume is of larger size than that of 1609.

The two parts were reprinted by Barcia at Madrid in 1722-1723. There have been later editions of the Spanish at Madrid in 1800, and in 1829, in four volumes, as a part of a series; Conquista del Nuevo Mondo, in nine volumes, which embraced also Solis’s Mexico, Garcilasso de la Vega’s Florida, and the Florida of Cardenas y Cano.

Rycaut’s English Royal Commentaries of Peru (London, 1688) was priced by Rich (no. 420) in 1832 at £1 4s., and is not worth more now. Markham’s English version of the first part was issued in two volumes by the Hakluyt Society in 1869-1871.

The French version (by J. Baudoin) of the first part was printed at Paris in 1633 as Le Commentaire Royal, and of the second part as Histoire des Guerres Civiles in 1650, and again in 1658 and 1672, and at Amsterdam in 1706. A French version of the first part was also printed at Amsterdam in 1715, and joined with the book on Florida; another French edition appeared at Amsterdam in 1737. A new translation of this first part, made by Dalibard, was printed in Paris in 1744. Baudoin’s version of both parts was reissued in Paris in 1830. There was a German translation in 1798.

An account of Garcilasso de la Vega and his ancestry is given by Markham in the introduction to his version of the Royal Commentaries of the Yncas. Another account is in the Documentos inéditos (España), vol. xvi.

The estimate held of him by Robertson has been largely shared among the older of the modern writers, who seem to think that Garcilasso added little to what he borrowed from others, though we find some traces in him of authorities now lost. The later writers are more generous in their praise of him. Prescott quotes him more than twice as often as he cites any other of the contemporary sources. (Cf. his Peru, vol. i. p. 289.)

Helps says that “with the exception of Bernal Diaz and Las Casas, there is not perhaps any historical writer of that period, on the subject of the Indies, whose loss would be more felt than that of Garcilasso de la Vega.”

C. Memoranda.—An early voyage to the coast is supposed to be indicated in an Italian tract of 1521, mentioned in the catalogue of the Biblioteca Colombina. It is not now known, except in what is supposed to be a German version. The first tidings (March 15, 1533) which Europe got of Pizarro’s success came from a letter which was addressed to the emperor, probably in Spanish, though we have no copy of it in that tongue; but it is preserved in Italian, Copia delle lettere del prefetto della India, la Nuova Spagna detta, a plaquette of two leaves, of which there is a copy in the Lenox Library. It is supposed to have been printed at Venice. This version is also included in the Libro di Benedetto (Venice, 1534). A German translation was printed at Nuremberg, February, 1534, as Newe Zeitung aus Hispanien, of four leaves. A French issue, Nouvelles certaines des isles du Peru, dated 1534, is in the British Museum. Ticknor cites Gayangos’ references to a tractate of four leaves, La Conquista del Peru, which he found in the British Museum.

It is not very clear to what city reference is made in a plaquette, Letera de la nobil cipta, novamente ritrouvata alle Indie ... data in Peru adi. xxv de novembre, de MDXXXIIII. An edition of the next year (1535) is “data in Zhaual.” Marco Guazzo’s Historie di tutte le cose degne di memoria qual del anno MDXXIIII., etc., published at Venice in 1540, gives another early account. It was repeated in the edition of 1545 and 1546.

The De Peruviæ regionis, inter novi orbis provincias celeberrimæ inventione of Levinus Apollonius of Ghent was published at Antwerp in 1565, 1566, 1567, for copies with these respective dates are found; though Sabin thinks Rich and Ternaux are in error in assigning an edition to 1565. It covers events from the discovery to the time of Gasca and the death of Gonzalo Pizarro. It also appeared as a third part to the German translation of Benzoni (Basle 1582).

Ternaux-Compans in his Voyages has preserved in a French version several early chronicles of minor importance. Such is Miguel Carello Balbóa’s Histoire du Peru (in vol. xvii.), the work of one who went to Bogota in 1566, and finished his work at Quito in 1586. It rehearses the story of the Inca rule, not always agreeing with Garcilasso, and only touches the Spanish Conquest as it had proceeded before the murder of Atahualpa. Another work is the Histoire du Pérou of Father Anello Oliva, a Jesuit, who was born at Naples in 1593, came to Peru as a Jesuit in 1597, and died at Lima in 1642. It was apparently written before 1631; but what Ternaux affords us is only the first of the four books which constitute the completed work. Juan de Velasco’s Histoire de Quito, a work of a later day but based on the early sources, makes volumes xviii. and xix. of Ternaux’s collection.

Alonso de Ovalle’s historical account of Chili was issued at Rome in 1646, in Italian, as Historica Relatione del Regno di Cile, and the same year at the same place in Spanish, as Histórica Relacion del Reyne de Chile. Six of the eight books are given in English in Churchill’s Voyages (1732), and in Pinkerton.

Among the minor documentary sources there is much of interest to be found in the Documentos inéditos (España), vols. v., xiii., xxvi., xlix., l., and li.

The Ministerio de Fomento of Peru printed at Madrid in 1881 the first volumes—edited by Jiménez de la Espada—of Relaciones geográficas de Indias. The editor supplied a learned introduction, and the volume contained twelve documents of the sixteenth century, which were then published for the first time; and they contribute to our knowledge of the condition of the country during that period.

There are other documents covering the whole course of Peruvian history in the collection of Documentos históricos del Peru en las epocas del coloniage despues de la conquista y de la independencia hasta a presente, colectados y arreglados por el coronel Manuel Odriozola, the first volume of which was published at Lima about twenty-five years ago (1863).

Harrisse (Bibl. Amer. Vet., pp. 320-322) enumerates many copies of manuscripts preserved in New York and Boston, some of which have since been printed. There is record of other manuscripts in New York in the Magazine of American History, i. 254.

The Varias relaciones del Peru y Chile y Conquista de la isla de Santa Catalina, 1535-1658 (Madrid, 1879) constitutes vol. xiii. of Coleccion de libros raros ó curiosos, which includes anonymous manuscripts in “Relacion del sitio del Cusco, 1537-1539,” in the “Rebelion de Giron, 1553,” and in some others of the seventeenth century. Vol. xvi. of the same Coleccion is edited by Jiménes de la Espada, and is entitled Memorias antiguas historiales y políticas del Perú, por D. Fernando Montesinos, seguidas de las Informaciones acerca del señorío de los Incas, hechas por mandado de D. Francisco de Toledo, virey del Perú [1570-1572]. Madrid, 1882. An account of the original which this edition of the work of Montesinos follows is given in the preface. The editor criticises the translation by Henri Ternaux-Compans in his Mémoires historiques sur l’ancien Pérou (forming part of his Voyages), Paris, 1840.

Leclerc in 1878 offered for 2,500 francs an unprinted manuscript containing the military Lives of Pedro Alvarez de Holguin and Martin de Almendral (Almendras), consisting of depositions respecting their services by eye-witnesses, taken in pursuance of a claim by their families for the possession of titles and property, their ancestors having been among the conquerors.

The most conspicuous writers upon Peruvian history in English are Prescott, Helps, and Markham,—the first two as the historians of the Conquest, and the third as an annotator of the original sources and an elucidator of controverted points. Prescott’s Conquest of Peru was published in 1843. He had been fortunate enough to secure copies from the manuscript stores which Muñoz had gathered, and Navarrete allowed his collections to be gleaned for the American’s use. He did not fail of the sympathy and support of Ternaux and of Gayangos. The ingenious and active assistance of Obadiah Rich secured him a good share of the manuscripts of the Kingsborough Collection when that was scattered. The Conquest of Peru was promptly translated into Spanish, and published at Madrid in 1847-1848; and again in a version supposed to have been made by Icazbalceta. It was printed at Mexico in 1849. A French translation was introduced to the world by Amédée Pichot, and the English on the continent were soon able to read it in their own tongue under a Paris imprint. The Dutch and German people were not long without versions in their vernaculars. Since Mr. Prescott’s death the revision, which the American reader was long kept from (owing to the obstructions to textual improvements imposed by the practice of stereotyping), was made by Mr. Kirk, who had been Prescott’s secretary; and the new edition, with that gentleman’s elucidatory and corrective notes, appeared at Philadelphia in 1874.

As was the case with the hero of Mexico, the chapters in Helps’s Spanish Conquest on the conqueror of Peru have, since the publication of that book, been extracted and fitted newly together under the title of The Life of Pizarro, with some account of his Associates in the Conquest of Peru, published in London in 1869. Pizarro is not, under Helps’s brush, the abhorrent figure of some other historians. “He is always calm, polite, dignified,” he says. “He was not one of the least admirable of the conquerors.”

Mr. Markham, referring to a visit which he made to Prescott, says: “He it was who encouraged me to undertake my Peruvian investigations and to persevere in them. To his kindly advice and assistance I owe more than I can say, and to him is due, in no small degree, the value of anything I have since been able to do in furtherance of Peruvian research.” The first fruit of Mr. Markham’s study was his Cusco and Lima in 1856. Three years later (1859) he was sent by the British Government to superintend the collection of cinchona plants and seeds (quinine) in Peru, and to introduce them into India. In pursuit of this mission, he formed the acquaintance with the country which was made public in his Travels in Peru and India in 1862. In 1880 he epitomized his great knowledge in a useful little handbook on Peru, which was published in London in the series of Foreign Countries and British Colonies. His greatest aid to the historian has come, however, from the annotations given by him to numerous volumes of the Hakluyt Society, which he has edited, and in his communications to the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society.

The Peruvian story is but an incidental feature of Hubert H. Bancroft’s Central America, where Alvarado’s report of May 12, 1535, and other documents which fell into that author’s hands with the Squier manuscripts afford in part the basis of his narrative, vol. ii. chap. vii. Bancroft accounts Pizarro himself the most detestable man in the Indies after Pedrárias. He collates the authorities on many disputed points, and is a valuable assistant, particularly for the relations of operations on the isthmus to those in Peru,—such as the efforts of Gonzalo Pizarro to make the isthmus the frontier of his Peruvian government, and Gasca’s method of breaking through it. In his chapter on “Mines and Mining” in his Mexico (vol. iii.) he incidentally recapitulates the story of the wealth which was extracted from Peru.

The dignified and well-balanced story as told in Robertson’s America (book vi.) is not without use to-day, and his judgment upon authorities (note cxxv.) is usually sound. He has of course fallen behind that sufficiency which Dr. Smyth found in him, when he gave his Lectures on Modern History (lecture xxi.). The latter writer reflected an opinion not yet outgrown when he says that “Pizarro was, after all, a vulgar conqueror, and is from the first detested, though he seizes upon our respect, and retains it in defiance of ourselves, from the powerful and decisive nature of his courage and of his understanding.”

The latest English summarized view of the Conquest will be found in R. G. Watson’s Spanish and Portuguese South America during the Colonial Period (London, 1884). The author lived in South America about twenty years ago, in various parts, as a diplomatic agent of the English government.