An account of Garcilasso de la Vega and his ancestry is given by Markham in the introduction to his version of the Royal Commentaries of the Yncas. Another account is in the Documentos inéditos (España), vol. xvi.[1549]
The estimate held of him by Robertson has been largely shared among the older of the modern writers, who seem to think that Garcilasso added little to what he borrowed from others, though we find some traces in him of authorities now lost. The later writers are more generous in their praise of him. Prescott quotes him more than twice as often as he cites any other of the contemporary sources. (Cf. his Peru, vol. i. p. 289.)
Helps says that “with the exception of Bernal Diaz and Las Casas, there is not perhaps any historical writer of that period, on the subject of the Indies, whose loss would be more felt than that of Garcilasso de la Vega.”
C. Memoranda.—An early voyage to the coast is supposed to be indicated in an Italian tract of 1521, mentioned in the catalogue of the Biblioteca Colombina. It is not now known, except in what is supposed to be a German version.[1550] The first tidings (March 15, 1533) which Europe got of Pizarro’s success came from a letter which was addressed to the emperor, probably in Spanish, though we have no copy of it in that tongue; but it is preserved in Italian, Copia delle lettere del prefetto della India, la Nuova Spagna detta, a plaquette of two leaves, of which there is a copy in the Lenox Library. It is supposed to have been printed at Venice.[1551] This version is also included in the Libro di Benedetto (Venice, 1534). A German translation was printed at Nuremberg, February, 1534, as Newe Zeitung aus Hispanien, of four leaves.[1552] A French issue, Nouvelles certaines des isles du Peru, dated 1534, is in the British Museum.[1553] Ticknor[1554] cites Gayangos’ references to a tractate of four leaves, La Conquista del Peru, which he found in the British Museum.[1555]
It is not very clear to what city reference is made in a plaquette, Letera de la nobil cipta, novamente ritrouvata alle Indie ... data in Peru adi. xxv de novembre, de MDXXXIIII. An edition of the next year (1535) is “data in Zhaual.”[1556] Marco Guazzo’s Historie di tutte le cose degne di memoria qual del anno MDXXIIII., etc., published at Venice in 1540, gives another early account.[1557] It was repeated in the edition of 1545 and 1546.
The De Peruviæ regionis, inter novi orbis provincias celeberrimæ inventione of Levinus Apollonius of Ghent was published at Antwerp in 1565, 1566, 1567, for copies with these respective dates are found;[1558] though Sabin thinks Rich and Ternaux are in error in assigning an edition to 1565. It covers events from the discovery to the time of Gasca and the death of Gonzalo Pizarro.[1559] It also appeared as a third part to the German translation of Benzoni (Basle 1582).
Ternaux-Compans in his Voyages has preserved in a French version several early chronicles of minor importance. Such is Miguel Carello Balbóa’s Histoire du Peru (in vol. xvii.), the work of one who went to Bogota in 1566, and finished his work at Quito in 1586. It rehearses the story of the Inca rule, not always agreeing with Garcilasso, and only touches the Spanish Conquest as it had proceeded before the murder of Atahualpa.[1560] Another work is the Histoire du Pérou of Father Anello Oliva, a Jesuit, who was born at Naples in 1593, came to Peru as a Jesuit in 1597, and died at Lima in 1642. It was apparently written before 1631; but what Ternaux affords us is only the first of the four books which constitute the completed work.[1561] Juan de Velasco’s Histoire de Quito, a work of a later day but based on the early sources, makes volumes xviii. and xix. of Ternaux’s collection.
Alonso de Ovalle’s historical account of Chili was issued at Rome in 1646, in Italian, as Historica Relatione del Regno di Cile, and the same year at the same place in Spanish, as Histórica Relacion del Reyne de Chile. Six of the eight books are given in English in Churchill’s Voyages (1732), and in Pinkerton.[1562]
Among the minor documentary sources there is much of interest to be found in the Documentos inéditos (España), vols. v., xiii., xxvi., xlix., l., and li.
The Ministerio de Fomento of Peru printed at Madrid in 1881 the first volumes—edited by Jiménez de la Espada—of Relaciones geográficas de Indias. The editor supplied a learned introduction, and the volume contained twelve documents of the sixteenth century, which were then published for the first time;[1563] and they contribute to our knowledge of the condition of the country during that period.