[1103] Navarrete first printed it in his Coleccion, i. 421; it was included also in Vedia’s Historiadores primitivos de Indias (Madrid, 1852); and Gayangos, in his Cartas de Hernan Cortés (Paris, 1866) does not hesitate to let it stand for the first letter, while he also annotates it. It is likewise printed in the Biblioteca de autores Españoles, vol. xxii., and by Alaman in his Disertaciones sobre la historia de la República Mejicana, vol. i., appendix, with a sketch of the expedition. Cf. Prescott’s Mexico, i. 360, iii. 428; H. H. Bancroft’s Mexico, i. 169.
[1104] Bancroft, Mexico, i. 170. It is supposed that still a third letter went at the same time, which is now known to us. Three letters of this time were found in 1866 among some old account-books in a library sold in Austria. Two of them proved to be written in Spain upon the news of Cortés’ discoveries, while one was written by a companion of Cortés shortly after the landing on the Mexican coast, but is not seemingly an original, for it is written in German, and the heading runs: Newzeit wie unnsers aller-gnadigistn hern des Romischn und hyspaenischn Koningsleut Ain Costliche Newe Lanndschafft habn gefundn, and bears date June 28, 1519. There are some contradictions in it to the received accounts; but these are less important than the mistake of a modern French translator, who was not aware of the application of the name of Yucatan, at that time, to a long extent of coast, and who supposed the letters referred to Grijalva’s expedition. The original text, with a modern German and French version, appears in a small edition (thirty copies) which Frederic Muller, of Amsterdam, printed from the original manuscript (cf. his Books on America, 1872, no. 1,144; 1877, no. 2,296, priced at 120 florins) under the title of Trois lettres sur la découverte de Yucatan, Amsterdam, 1871 (Carter-Brown, vol. i. no. 66; Muller, Books on America, 1877, no. 2,296; C. H. Berendt in American Bibliopolist, July and August, 1872; Murphy, no. 2,795).
One of the news-sheets of the time, circulated in Europe, is preserved in the Royal Library at Berlin. A photo-lithographic fac-simile was published (one hundred copies) at Berlin in 1873. It is called: Newe Zeittung. von dem lande. das die Sponier funden haben ym 1521. iare genant Iucatan. It is a small quarto in gothic type, of four unnumbered leaves, with a woodcut. Cf. Bibl. Amer. Vet., no. 70, with fac-simile of title; Carter-Brown, i. 69; Muller (1877), no. 3,593; Sobolewski, no. 4,153.
[1105] Prescott used a copy taken from Muñoz’ transcript.
[1106] Cf. Prescott, Mexico, i. 262; Bancroft, Mexico, i. 72.
[1107] Cf. Stevens, Bibliotheca historica (1870), p. 103; Historical Collections, i. 342; and the section on “Early Descriptions of America” in the present work.
[1108] Bibl. Amer. Vet., no. 179.
[1109] Sabin, vi. 126; Carter-Brown, i. 63.
[1110] Bibl. Amer. Vet., no. 105.
[1111] Mexico, i. 547.