ductions of that hitherto hidden world; and beside all other things, no small quantity of gold. O wonderful, Pomponius! Upon the surface of that earth are found rude masses of native gold, of a weight that one is afraid to mention. Some have been found weighing two hundred and fifty ounces, and they hope to find others of a much larger size, from what the naked natives intimate, when they extol their gold to our people. Nor are Lestrigonians, nor Polyphemi who feed on human flesh, any longer doubtful. Attendbut beware! lest they rise in horror before thee! When he proceeded from the Fortunate islands, now termed the Canaries, to Hispaniola, the island on which he first set foot, turning his prow a little toward the south, he arrived at innumerable islands of savage men, whom they call cannibals, or Caribbees; and these, though naked, are courageous warriors. They fight skilfully with bows and clubs, and have boats hollowed from a single tree, yet very capacious, in which they make fierce descents on neighbouring islands, inhabited by milder people. They attack their villages, from which they carry off the men and devour them," &c*.

Another letter to Pomponius Lætus, on the same subject, has been cited at large on the body of this work. It is true these extracts give nothing that has not been stated more at large in the decades of the same author, but they are curious, as the very first announcements of the discoveries of Columbus, and as showing the first stamp of these extraordinary events upon the mind of one of the most learned and liberal men of the age.

A collection of the letters of Peter Martyr was published in 1530, under the title of Opus Epistolarum, Petri Martyris Anglerii; it is divided into thirty-eight books, each contain

* Idem. Epist. 147.

ing the letters of one year. The same objections have been made to his letters as to his decades, but they bear the same stamp of candour, probity, and great information. They possess peculiar value from being written at the moment before the facts they record were distorted or discoloured by prejudice or misrepresentation. His works abound in interesting particulars not to be found in any contemporary historian. They are rich in thought, but still richer in fact, and are full of urbanity, and of the liberal feeling of a scholar who has mingled with the world. He is a fountain from which others draw, and from which, with a little precaution, they may draw securely. He died in Valladolid, in 1526.

No. XXVIII.

OVIEDO.

GONZALO Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes, commonly known as Oviedo, was born in Madrid in 1478, and died in Valladolid in 1557, aged seventy-nine years. He was of a noble Asturian family, and in his boyhood (in 1490,) was appointed one of the pages to prince Juan, heir apparent of Spain, the only son of Ferdinand and Isabella. He was in this situation at the time of the siege and surrender of Granada, was consequently at court at the time that Columbus made his agreement with the catholic sovereigns, and was in the same capacity at Barcelona, and witnessed the triumphant entrance of the discoverer attended by a number of the natives of the newly found countries.

In 1513 he was sent out to the new world by Ferdinand, to superintend the gold foundries. For many years he

served there in various offices of trust and dignity, both under Ferdinand, and his grandson and successor Charles V. In 1535, he was made alcayde of the fortress of St. Domingo in Hispaniola, and afterwards was appointed historiographer of the Indias. At the time of his death, he had served the crown upwards of forty years, thirty-four of which were passed in the colonies, and he had crossed the ocean eight times, as he mentions in various parts of his writings. He wrote several works, the most important is a chronicle of the Indias in fifty books, divided into three parts. The first part, containing nineteen books, was printed at Seville in 1535, and reprinted in 1547 at Salamanca, augmented by a twentieth book containing shipwrecks. The remainder of the work exists in manuscript. The printing of it was commenced at Valladolid in 1557, but was discontinued in consequence of his death. It is one of the unpublished treasures. of Spanish colonial history.

He was an indefatigable writer, laborious in collecting and recording facts, and composed a multitude of volumes, which are scattered through the Spanish libraries. His writings are full of events which happened under his own eye, or were communicated to him by eye-witnesses; but he was deficient in judgment and discrimination. He took his facts without caution, often from sources unworthy of credit. In his account of the first voyage of Columbus, he falls into several egregious errors, in consequence of taking the verbal information of a pilot named Hernan Perez Matteo, who was in the interest of the Pinzons, and adverse to the admiral. His work is not much to be depended upon in matters relative to Columbus. When he treats of a more advanced period of the new world, from his own actual observation, he is much more satisfactory, though he is accused of listening too readily to popular fables and misrepresentations.

His account of the natural productions of the new world, and of the customs of its inhabitants, is full of curious par ticulars; and the best narratives of some of the minor voyages which succeeded those of Columbus, are to be found in the unpublished part of his work.

No. XXIX.

CURA DE LOS PALACIOS.

ANDREZ BERNALDEZ, or Bernal, generally known by the title of the Curate of los Palacios, from having been curate of the town of los Palacios from about 1488 to 1513, was born in the town of Fuentes, and was for some time chaplain to Diego Deza, archbishop of Seville, one of the greatest friends to the application of Columbus. Bernaldez was well acquainted with the admiral, who was occasionally his guest, and in 1496 left many of his manuscripts and journals with him, which the curate made use of in a history of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, in which he introduced an account of the voyages of Columbus. In his narrative of the admiral's coasting along the southern side of Cuba, the curate is more minute and accurate than any other historian. His work exists only in manuscript, but is well known to historians, who have made frequent use of it. In the possession of O. Rich, Esq., of Madrid, is a very curious manuscript chronicle, already quoted in this work, made up from this history of the curate of los Palacios, and from various other historians of the times, by some contemporary writer. In his account of the voyage of Columbus, he differs in some trivial particulars from the regular copy of the manuscript of

the curate.

These variations have been carefully examined by the author of this work, and wherever they appear to have been for the better, have been adopted.

No. XXX.

66 NAVIGATIONE DEL RE DE CASTIGLIA DELE ISOLE E PAESE NUOVAMENTE RETROVATE."

"NAVIGATIO CHRISTOPHORI COLOMBI."

THE above are the titles, in Italian and in Latin, of the earliest narrative of the first and second voyages of Columbus that appeared in print. It was anonymous; and there are some curious particulars in regard to it. It was originally written in Italian by Montalbodo Fracanzo, or Fracanzano, or by Francapano de Montabaldo, for writers differ in regard to the name, and was published in Vicenza, in 1507, in a collection of voyages, entitled Mondo novo, e paesi nuovamente retrovati. The collection was republished at Milan, in 1508, both in Italian, and in a Latin translation made by Archangelo Madrignano, under the title of Itinerarium Portugallensium; this title being given, because the work related chiefly to the voyages of Luigi Cadamosto, a Venetian, in the service of Portugal.

The collection was afterwards augmented by Simon Grinæus with other travels, and printed in Latin at Basle, in 1533*, by Hervagio, entitled Novus Orbis regionum, &c. The edition of Basle, 1555, and the Italian edition of Milan, in 1508, have been consulted in the course of this work.