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.[1537]
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.[1538]
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.[1539]
The two parts were reprinted by Barcia at Madrid in 1722-1723.[1540] 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.[1541] 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,[1542] and of the second part as Histoire des Guerres Civiles in 1650, and again in 1658 and 1672,[1543] and at Amsterdam in 1706.[1544] A French version of the first part was also printed at Amsterdam in 1715,[1545] and joined with the book on Florida; another French edition appeared at Amsterdam in 1737.[1546] A new translation of this first part, made by Dalibard, was printed in Paris in 1744.[1547] Baudoin’s version of both parts was reissued in Paris in 1830.[1548] There was a German translation in 1798.