AN IMPORTANT FIND OF MSS.
Juan F. Riaño. "Review of Continental Literature," July, 1891, to July, 1892. From "The Athenæum" (England), July 2, 1892.
The excitement about Columbus has rather been heightened by the accidental discovery of three large holograph volumes, in quarto, of Fr. Bartolomé de Las Casas, the Bishop of Chiapa, who, as is well known, accompanied the navigator in his fourth voyage to the West Indies. The volumes were deposited by Las Casas in San Gregorio de Valladolid, where he passed the last years of his life in retirement. There they remained until 1836, when, owing to the suppression of the monastic orders, the books of the convent were dispersed, and the volumes of the Apostle of the Indies, as he is still called, fell into the hands of a collector of the name of Acosta, from whom a grandson named Arcos inherited them. Though written in the bishop's own hand, they are not of great value, as they only contain his well-known "Historia Apologetica de las Indias," of which no fewer than three different copies, dating from the sixteenth century, are to be found here at Madrid, and the whole was published some years ago in the "Documentos Inéditos para la Historia de España."
The enthusiasm for Columbus and his companions has not in the least damped the ardor of my countrymen for every sort of information respecting their former colonies, in America or their possessions in the Indian Archipelago and on the northern coast of Africa. Respecting the former I may mention the second volume of the "Historia del Nuevo Mundo," by Cobo, 1645; the third and fourth volume of the "Origen de los Indios del Peru, Mexico, Santa Féy Chile," by Diego Andrés Rocha; "De las Gentes del Peru," forming part of the "Historia Apologetica," by Bartolomé de las Casas, though not found in his three holograph volumes recently discovered.