Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1.djvu/131

Rh details bewildering, while through all pierces the jealous determination of a wounded vanity to assert its claims to recognition. The stamp of perfect sincerity and frankness, however, is upon the whole work, and its value as an historical document, particularly when paralleled with the letters of Cortes, and the chronicles of Gomara, is superlative and unimpeachable.

Prescott describes Bernal Diaz as of "a poor and humble family," but since his father held the office of regidor this can hardly be exact, as such posts, especially in a town of the importance of Medina del Campo, were not held by the poor and humble. He himself claimed some kinship with Don Diego Velasquez.



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gonzalo fernandez de oviedo y valdés

Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo was born of an illustrious family in Asturias in 1478, and passed his early years at Court as page to the Infante Don Juan, only son of the Catholic Sovereigns. He spent some years in Italy in the service of the King of Naples, but returned to Castile, where he became custodian of the crown jewels, until he was sent as royal inspector of the gold smelting in the Indies. After taking part in Pedrarias de Avila's colonising expedition to Darien, he returned and settled permanently in San Domingo.

Oviedo kept in touch with the Spanish Court and returned several times to Spain, on one of which occasions, in 1526, he published his Sumario, which was dedicated to the Emperor, and dealt with the geography, climate, vegetation, animals, and tribes of the American Colonies, and which met with a popular reception from the public. The first volume of his great work, however, Historia General de las Indias, in nineteen books, to which he had given years of careful labour, appeared in 1535. The entire work is divided into three parts, consisting in all of fifty books, and includes everything that had already appeared in his Sumario. The second and third parts are occupied with the conquest of Mexico, Peru, and other South American countries. Oviedo, through his