to his heir his yet unrequited claims for his services in the expedition under Colombo. He states that, while the expedition was in the Rio de Belem, a great number of Indians from another district assembled in the neighbourhood, giving out that they had come to join those of Veragua, to fight against the natives of Cobrava Auriva.

But,' says Mendez, I believed them not, and thought they had assembled to burn our ships and kill us all; upon which supposition the admiral ordered me to go and explore. I went accordingly, with one single companion, to the cacique's habitation, and was met by the chief's son, who roughly opposed my progress, asking me what I wanted with his father? I said that I was a physician, but the young Indian would not be persuaded. I, seeing that by this means I could not pacify him, took out from my pocket a comb, scissors, and looking glass, and I told my companion, Escobar, to comb and cut my hair. At the sight of this, the cacique's son, and the other Indians present, looked astonished and dismayed; I told Escobar to comb the cacique's son, and to cut his hair; then I gave him the comb, scissors, and glass, upon which he became friendly, and I asked him for something to eat. By his order, his people did bring some provisions, of which we cheerfully partook, and then we left them friends. I then returned on board, and made report to my lord the admiral, of all the occurrences.'—vol. i., p. 316.

Next morning, however, there was a council held on board, and Colombo having asked the opinion of Mendez, the latter said, that the cacique and the principal among his people must be seized, after which, the rest would be easily induced to submit. This barbarous council was carried into effect; the cacique and most of his chiefs and their wives, children, and relatives, with all the principal men of their race, were made prisoners; but while they were on the way to the ships the cacique escaped, through the fault of the man who had charge of him, and afterwards caused the Spaniards much injury. The rains then came, and the Admiral sailed out, leaving Mendez on shore with seventy men. The latter had to resist the attacks of the justly irritated natives, and at last was glad to leave that ill-fated coast. The whole of Mendez' narrative is highly interesting for the tone of plain, blunt sincerity in which it is written, and as exhibiting the bold reckless spirit of an adventurer ready to serve his master per fas per nefas. Colombo seems to have well understood and appreciated this man's character, for he gave him 'other dangerous commissions to execute in the island of Čuba and elsewhere.'

It is curious to observe Colombo, the bold navigator, the determined and not over-scrupulous commander, the keen speculator who bestows so many praises on the great utility of gold,* now and then seized with a fit of devotional enthusiasm, fancying at one time that he had discovered the primitive Eden, and at another, writing to

* Vol. i. p. 309. Carta de Colon.

a learned monk, Gorricio, about the end of the world being only one hundred and fifty years removed, and insisting that Jerusalem was soon to be delivered from the infidels; events which, in his excited fancy, he connects with his astonishing discoveries in the New World. He quotes the Bible, and several learned rabbis, in support of his prognostications. We have here also a letter of his to the Pope, which he wrote in February, 1502, before setting out on his fourth voyage, and in which he acquaints his holiness with his unexpected success. In several passages he expresses an honest and Christian belief, that he was an instrument in the hands of Providence, to carry the light of the Gospel to the New World. In his complaints about the affair of Bobadilla, he thus expresses himself:

'I have added to the dominions of their Catholic Majesties, more lands than Europe and Africa put together. I have withstood the offers of France, England, and Portugal, and have answered, that these lands belong to their majesties, for here my Redeemer has sent me. I have lost the best part of my life in this conquest; and I now find myself upon invidious and malicious charges deprived of all. .'-vol. ii., p. 254.

From his fourth voyage Colombo returned to Spain, in November, 1504, ill in health, and soon after queen Isabella his patroness, died. He survived her but a short time, and we have here a copy of his will, made on his death bed, at Valladolid, the 19th May, 1506, in which he describes himself under the high sounding title of 'Admiral, Viceroy, and Governor-General of the islands and continents of the Indies.' A few hours afterwards, these were all empty sounds!

Mr. Navarrete next passes in review the various Spanish writers who have treated of Colombo's discoveries, and of the early Spanish settlements in the New World. The first in order is Andres Bernaldes, rector of the Villa de los Palacios, who, in his Historia de los Reyes Catolicos, speaks of the great events of his time, Colombo's voyages and discoveries. The good cura knew Colombo personally, and among other things, speaking of the admiral's return to Castile after his second voyage, he states, that he was dressed in the garb of a monk of St. Francis, (one of those fits of devotion, we imagine, to which we have seen Colombo was subject), and that he had with him some Indians, whom he had taken away along with the cacique Caonoboa, to shew them to queen Isabel; the cacique himself, however, had died of grief at sea. The next writer is Pedro Martin de Angleria, also personally acquainted with Colombo, who wrote: De rebus Oceanicis et orbe novo Decades tres. The third is Don Hernando Colon, son of the admiral, who was only fourteen years of age when he accompanied his father in his fourth and last voyage. He wrote the history of the admiral, in Spanish, which was lost; but Alfonso de Ulloa wrote an Italian translation of it, and from it a retranslation into Spanish, carelessly executed, was published by Barcia.

Next, but perhaps first in celebrity as connected with Indian affairs, stands Father Bartolome de Las Casas, whose invectives against the conquerors, says Navarrete, have been the main foundation on which foreign writers have built their accounts of those early transactions.' Of Las Casas' various works, the most important is his Historia general de las Indias, in three parts or volumès, in which he treats of the discovery, conquest, and subsequent events in the New World, as far as the year 1520. These volumes, however, remain inedited; the two first (autograph) are preserved in the royal academy of history, and the third in the royal library.

In this work,' says Mr. Navarrete, Las Casas has displayed vast erudition, mixed, however, with a disregard for temperance and discrimination which sometimes borders upon temerity. He had access to many original documents, which he has most carefully and scrupulously copied or extracted, and in these alone he is entitled to the highest credit and confidence. On this account, and for his having been present at many of the early expeditions and conquests, his authority has been followed by many subsequent writers, and among the rest by Antonio de Herrera, in his Decadas. He does not deserve so much credit when he relates from hearsay or from recollection; for as he began, as he himself says, to write his history in 1527, when he was fifty-three years of age, and did not complete it before 1559, when he was eighty-five; and as he confesses also that he wrote both what he had seen and what he had not seen, but heard, during sixty years of his life, it is not extraordinary that his memory should fail him, and that he should confound one event with the other, deviate from the order of chronology, and alter the real nature and connexion of cause and effect.'

Our editor after quoting instances of this incorrectness, proceeds in the following language, which must appear remarkable as coming from ultra Catholic Spain:

'To give an idea of the singular character of this writer (Las Casas), we must premise, that his system on the conquest of the New World reduced itself to this principle, viz.: that the authority of the pope alone could legally bestow on the Christian monarchs the sovereignty over the discovered lands, which was to be, however, but a limited and protected supremacy, leaving the native kings or chiefs in the possession of their own immediate authority over their subjects as before, this being the properest means to obtain the establishment of Christianity, an object, which, in Las Casas' judgment, was the only argument or title that could be alleged in favour of conquest. In short, evangelic mildness, charity, and pacific instruction, were the only arms to be employed in this spiritual subjugation. Consequently, whatever departs from this principle is in Las Casas' eyes a crime, an usurpation, a tyranny, a disorder.'

In seeing the good Las Casas' notions of public right thus severely commented upon by another Spanish clergyman, and a secretary of his Catholic Majesty, in the nineteenth century, many reflections on the contradictions of human opinions will present

themselves to the mind of the reader. One thing is evident, Las Casas was sincere in his faith, single hearted, and little acquainted with the secret springs of worldly affairs, otherwise he could never have fancied that the subjection of the New World, or of any country, could be effected by spiritual means alone; or rather that the Spaniards would be satisfied with these. Yet his was an amiable error—a delusion common to many high and generous minds of various communions, even in our own days. Exclusive religious studies but indifferently qualify a man to direct the intricate and jarring machinery of human interests and human passions in this Mr. Navarrete is right-he knows men better; but as a matter of speculative opinion, Las Casas' simplicity is more attractive than his censor's worldly wisdom.

Another and a classical writer on Indian affairs is Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo, whose works are not yet wholly known to the public. The principal among them, viz. La Historia natural y general de las Indias, islas y tierra firme del mar Oceano, contains fifty books, and is divided into three parts; the first of which alone has been printed entirely, and afterwards reprinted with a comment, and also translated into Italian and French. Of the second part, the first book only has been printed; and the remaining books, as well as the whole of the third part, have remained inedited, although Charles III. ordered the whole to be printed. Oviedo,' says Navarrete, is a laborious diligent writer, very accurate, especially when treating of the epoch which followed that of Colombo, and with the events of which he was better acquainted than with the earlier times of the first discovery.' Oviedo was born in 1478, went in 1513 to Tierra Firme, as veedor de las fundiciones de oro, or inspector of the smelting of the gold; in 1519, he was lieutenant to Davila, in Darien, where he distinguished himself. In 1526 he was named governor and captain of the province of Carthagena, in Tierra Firme; and in 1535, alcalde of the fortress of St. Domingo, in Hispaniola. Afterwards, having returned to Spain, he was appointed cronista general, or historiographer of the Indies. He died at Valladolid in 1557, having been forty years in the king's service, thirty of which he passed in

the Indies.

After this recapitulation of the old writers, contemporary with the discovery, Navarrete proceeds to argue, that it is from these the history of that period ought to be compiled. He then enters into a sort of apologetic disquisition on the conduct of the Spaniards at the conquest, in which it is no part of our business to follow him. Unfortunately, if we examine the history of the various European settlements in both worlds, there is enough to make us hold down our heads and blush for the sins of all and each. All were guilty: the guilt of the Spaniards appears more heinous and destructive, owing perhaps, in part, to the magnitude of their conquests. Some difference also ought to be made between the

various Spanish expeditions, and between their chiefs. The conquest of Mexico, by Cortez, is certainly divested, in a great measure, of the character of atrocity and iniquity which attaches itself to those of Pizarro and Almagro. When we think of the dreadful sacrifices of human victims immolated to the monstrous Mexican idols-when we reflect that the Mexican rulers were a race of usurpers that Montezuma was a gloomy, cruel, and insidious tyrant, we cannot but rejoice in the success of Cortez. Conquest alone could extirpate the Juggernauts of the New World; and we may even allow, that humanity and civilization triumphed for once under the banners of ambition.

In conclusion, we must observe, that Mr. Navarrete appears to us to have acted his part with a certain dignified moderation; which is the more commendable, considering the quarter whence it proceeds. If he has not succeeded in making an impression in favour of Spain, he may console himself by reflecting, that the advocate is worthy of a better cause.

Si Pergama dextra

Defendi possent: etiam hac defensa fuissent.

For our part, we have viewed this work in the light the editor himself professes to see it—as a series of valuable, authentic, historical documents, and as such we deem it highly important. We hope Mr. Navarrete may continue his task, and give us the third volume, which will contain the account of, and documents connected with, the conquest of Costa Firme and Florida; and the fourth volume, which will bring to our view Hernan Cortez and his little valiant band. Many valuable documents, as Mr. N. observes, have been lost, through neglect or accident*; others have been destroyed during the six years' war against the French; some have found their way to foreign lands. In the present state of Spain, too, it must be a great relief to a man of sense and taste, to withdraw himself from the hot-houses of faction and intrigue, and to retire to the peace of the libraries, to employ himself amid those splendid collections which are scattered about the Peninsula; and there, among the memorials of learning and departed worth, to gaze at the brilliant meteor of Spain's past glory-the glories of Castile and Aragon-to admire their chivalrous struggles against the children of Agar-to feed the mind on the records of the heroism, for that cannot be denied to them, of Cortez and of Pizarro-and to dwell on the remembrance of those times when the sun never set on the dominions of the Spanish monarchy."

* Among the rest, the archives of the kingdom of Aragon, destroyed in the bombardment of Zaragoza, in January, 1809, and the library of the university and the archiepiscopal library of Valencia, burnt by the shells of the French under Suchet, in January, 1812. See Navarrete's illustrations to his introduction, v. i., p. 135, where he gives an enumeration of the precious manuscripts and other works thus lost to the world.