LORENZANA’S MAP OF NEW SPAIN.
In French. Harrisse (Bibl. Amer. Vet., Additions, no. 73) notes a French rendering of a text, seemingly made up of the first and second letters, and probably following a Spanish original, now lost, which was printed at Antwerp in 1523.[1124] This second letter is also epitomized in the French Extraict ou recueil des isles nouvellement trouvées of Peter Martyr, printed at Paris in 1532, and in Bellegarde’s Histoire universelle des voyages (Amsterdam, 1708), vol. i.
The principal French translation is one based on Lorenzana, abridging that edition somewhat, and numbering the letters erroneously first, second, and third. It was published at Paris in 1778, 1779, etc., under the title Correspondance de Fernand Cortes avec l’Empereur Charles Quint, and was translated by the Vicomte de Flavigny.[1125] The text of Flavigny’s second letter is included in Charton’s Voyageurs, iii. 368-420. There were also editions of Flavigny printed in Switzerland and at Frankfort.
In German. A translation of the second and third letters, made by Andrew Diether and Birck, was published at Augsburg in 1550 as Cortesi von dem Newen Hispanien. After the second letter, which constitutes part i., the beginning of part ii. is borrowed from Peter Martyr, which is followed by the third letter of Cortés; and this is succeeded in turn, on folios 51-60, by letters from Venezuela about the settlements there (1534-1540), and one from Oviedo written at San Domingo in 1543. There are matters which are not contained in any of the Spanish or Latin editions.[1126]
The second, third, and fourth letters—translated by J. J. Stapfer, who supplied a meritorious introduction and an appendix—were printed at Heidelberg in 1779 as Eroberung von Mexico, and again at Berne in 1793.[1127] Another German version, by Karl Wilhelm Koppe,—Drei Berichte des General-Kapitäns Cortes an Karl V.,—with an introduction and notes, was published at Berlin in 1834. It has the tribute-registers and map of New Spain, as in Lorenzana’s edition.[1128]
In Dutch and Flemish. Harrisse (Bibl. Amer. Vet., Additions, no. 72) notes a tract of thirty leaves, in gothic letter, called De Contreyen vanden Eylanden, etc., which was printed in Antwerp in 1523 (with a French counterpart at the same time), and which seems to have been based on the first and second letters, combined in a Spanish original not now known. There is a copy in the National Library at Paris. There was a Dutch version, or epitome, in the Dutch edition of Grynæus, 1563, and a Flemish version appeared in Ablyn’s Nieuwe Weerelt, at Antwerp, 1563. There was another Dutch rendering in Gottfried and Vander Aa’s Zee-en landreizen (1727)[1129] and in the Brieven van Ferdinand Cortes, Amsterdam, 1780.[1130]