There are other documents covering the whole course of Peruvian history in the collection of Documentos históricos del Peru en las epocas del coloniage despues de la conquista y de la independencia hasta a presente, colectados y arreglados por el coronel Manuel Odriozola, the first volume of which was published at Lima about twenty-five years ago (1863).
Harrisse (Bibl. Amer. Vet., pp. 320-322) enumerates many copies of manuscripts preserved in New York and Boston, some of which have since been printed. There is record of other manuscripts in New York in the Magazine of American History, i. 254.
The Varias relaciones del Peru y Chile y Conquista de la isla de Santa Catalina, 1535-1658 (Madrid, 1879)[1564] constitutes vol. xiii. of Coleccion de libros raros ó curiosos, which includes anonymous manuscripts in “Relacion del sitio del Cusco, 1537-1539,” in the “Rebelion de Giron, 1553,” and in some others of the seventeenth century. Vol. xvi. of the same Coleccion is edited by Jiménes de la Espada, and is entitled Memorias antiguas historiales y políticas del Perú, por D. Fernando Montesinos, seguidas de las Informaciones acerca del señorío de los Incas, hechas por mandado de D. Francisco de Toledo, virey del Perú [1570-1572]. Madrid, 1882. An account of the original which this edition of the work of Montesinos follows is given in the preface. The editor criticises the translation by Henri Ternaux-Compans in his Mémoires historiques sur l’ancien Pérou (forming part of his Voyages), Paris, 1840.[1565]
PRESCOTT’S LIBRARY.
Leclerc in 1878[1566] offered for 2,500 francs an unprinted manuscript containing the military Lives of Pedro Alvarez de Holguin and Martin de Almendral (Almendras), consisting of depositions respecting their services by eye-witnesses, taken in pursuance of a claim by their families for the possession of titles and property, their ancestors having been among the conquerors.
The most conspicuous writers upon Peruvian history in English are Prescott, Helps, and Markham,—the first two as the historians of the Conquest, and the third as an annotator of the original sources and an elucidator of controverted points. Prescott’s Conquest of Peru was published in 1843. He had been fortunate enough to secure copies from the manuscript stores which Muñoz had gathered, and Navarrete allowed his collections to be gleaned for the American’s use. He did not fail of the sympathy and support of Ternaux and of Gayangos. The ingenious and active assistance of Obadiah Rich secured him a good share of the manuscripts of the Kingsborough Collection when that was scattered. The Conquest of Peru was promptly translated into Spanish, and published at Madrid in 1847-1848; and again in a version supposed to have been made by Icazbalceta. It was printed at Mexico in 1849. A French translation was introduced to the world by Amédée Pichot, and the English on the continent were soon able to read it in their own tongue under a Paris imprint. The Dutch and German people were not long without versions in their vernaculars. Since Mr. Prescott’s death the revision, which the American reader was long kept from (owing to the obstructions to textual improvements imposed by the practice of stereotyping), was made by Mr. Kirk, who had been Prescott’s secretary; and the new edition, with that gentleman’s elucidatory and corrective notes, appeared at Philadelphia in 1874.
As was the case with the hero of Mexico, the chapters in Helps’s Spanish Conquest on the conqueror of Peru have, since the publication of that book, been extracted and fitted newly together under the title of The Life of Pizarro, with some account of his Associates in the Conquest of Peru, published in London in 1869. Pizarro is not, under Helps’s brush, the abhorrent figure of some other historians. “He is always calm, polite, dignified,” he says. “He was not one of the least admirable of the conquerors.”
Mr. Markham, referring to a visit which he made to Prescott, says: “He it was who encouraged me to undertake my Peruvian investigations and to persevere in them. To his kindly advice and assistance I owe more than I can say, and to him is due, in no small degree, the value of anything I have since been able to do in furtherance of Peruvian research.” The first fruit of Mr. Markham’s study was his Cusco and Lima in 1856. Three years later (1859) he was sent by the British Government to superintend the collection of cinchona plants and seeds (quinine) in Peru, and to introduce them into India. In pursuit of this mission, he formed the acquaintance with the country which was made public in his Travels in Peru and India in 1862. In 1880 he epitomized his great knowledge in a useful little handbook on Peru, which was published in London in the series of Foreign Countries and British Colonies. His greatest aid to the historian has come, however, from the annotations given by him to numerous volumes of the Hakluyt Society, which he has edited, and in his communications to the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society.
The Peruvian story is but an incidental feature of Hubert H. Bancroft’s Central America, where Alvarado’s report of May 12, 1535, and other documents which fell into that author’s hands with the Squier manuscripts afford in part the basis of his narrative, vol. ii. chap. vii. Bancroft accounts Pizarro himself the most detestable man in the Indies after Pedrárias. He collates the authorities on many disputed points, and is a valuable assistant, particularly for the relations of operations on the isthmus to those in Peru,—such as the efforts of Gonzalo Pizarro to make the isthmus the frontier of his Peruvian government, and Gasca’s method of breaking through it. In his chapter on “Mines and Mining” in his Mexico (vol. iii.) he incidentally recapitulates the story of the wealth which was extracted from Peru.