[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.