Landa was born in 1524, and was one of the first of his Order to come to Yucatan, where he finally became Bishop of Mérida in 1572, and died in 1579. Among the books commonly referred to for the later period is the first part (the second was never published) of Juan de Villagutierre Sotomayor’s Historia de la Conquista de la provincia de el Itza, etc., Madrid, 1701. It deals somewhat more with the spiritual and the military conquests, but writers find it important.[1244]
The latest English history of the peninsula is that by Charles St. J. Fancourt, History of Yucatan, London, 1854;[1245] but a more extended, if less agreeable, book is Ancona’s Historia de Yucatan desde la época mas remota hasta nuestros dias, published at Mérida in four volumes in 1878-1880. It gives references which will be found useful.[1246]
H. Bibliography of Mexico.—The earliest special bibliography of Mexico of any moment is that which, under the title of Catalogo de sa museo historico Indiano, is appended to Boturini Benaduci’s Idea de una nueva historia general de la America septentrional (Madrid, 1746), which was the result of eight years’ investigations into the history of Mexico. He includes a list of books, maps, and manuscripts, of which the last remnants in 1853 were in the Museo Nacional in Mexico.[1247] Of the list of New Spain authors by Eguiara y Eguren, only a small part was published in 1755 as Bibliotheca Mexicana.[1248] It was intended to cover all authors born in New Spain; but though he lived to arrange the work through the letter J, only A, B, and C were published. All titles are translated into Latin. Its incompleteness renders the bibliographical parts of Maneiro’s De Vitis Mexicanorum (1791) more necessary, and makes Beristain’s Bibliotheca Hispano-Americano Septentrional,[1249] of three volumes, published at Mexico in 1816, 1819, and 1821, of more importance than it would otherwise be. Beristain, also, only partly finished his work; but a nephew completed the publication. It has become rare; and its merits are not great, though its notices number 3,687.
Of more use to the student of the earlier history, however, is the list which Clavigero gives in his Storia del Messico published in 1780. A Jesuit, and a collector, having a book-lover’s keen scent, he surpassed all writers on the theme who had preceded him, in amassing the necessary stores for his special use. Since his day the field has been surveyed more systematically both by the general and special bibliographers. The student of early Spanish-Mexican history will of course not forget the help which he can get from general bibliographers like Brunet, from the Dictionary of Sabin, the works of Ternaux and Harrisse, the Carter-Brown Catalogue, not to speak of other important library catalogues.
The sale catalogues are not without assistance. Principal among them are the collections which had been formed by the Emperor Maximilian of Mexico,—which was sold in Leipsic in 1869 as the collection of José Maria Andrade,[1250]—and the Bibliotheca Mexicana formed by José Fernando Ramirez, which was sold in London in 1880.[1251]
All other special collections on Mexico have doubtless been surpassed by that which has been formed in San Francisco by Mr. Hubert Howe Bancroft, as a component part of his library pertaining to the western slope of America. Lists of such titles have been prefixed to his histories of Central America and of Mexico, and are to be supplemented by others as his extended work goes on. He has explained, in his preface to his Mexico (p. viii), the wealth of his manuscript stores; and it is his custom, as it was Prescott’s, to append to his chapters, and sometimes to passages of the text, considerable accounts, with some bibliographical detail, of the authorities with which he deals.[1252] Helps, though referring to his authorities, makes no such extended references to them.[1253]
