Page:Letters of Cortes to Emperor Charles V - Vol 1.djvu/16

viii collections of state papers and correspondence which were not infrequently in a condition of disheartening and baffling confusion. The collections of inedited documents published by Rivadeneira under the title of Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, that of Navarrete published in Madrid in 1842, the Biblioteca Occidental of Barcia, the voluminous French translations of Temaux-Compans, and finally the indefatigable labours of Señor Garcia Icazbalceta and Don Pascual Gayangos have cleared the modern student's path of formidable difficulties.

Although I am the fortunate possessor of a number of these valuable collections, I have likewise had to make researches in libraries and collections, both public and private, in Mexico, Spain, Italy, and England, in the course of which I have met with courteous and helpful encouragement from many to whom my sense of obligation is profound; but primarily I owe the pleasure and interest which the preparation of this work has afforded me to the late Abbé Augustin Fischer, sometime chaplain to the ill-fated Emperor Maximilian of Mexico, under whose cultured guidance it was my privilege to begin my studies in Spanish-American history. The death of my delightful and accomplished mentor, after a life of great vicissitudes, deprives me of one of the chief satisfactions which the publication of this work would otherwise have afforded me, but it does not lessen my obligation to pay a tribute of grateful thanks to his memory.

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