X INTRODUCTION 



Before leaving this account of the translation, I must not fail to 

 acknowledge with gratitude the devoted assistance of my secretaries — 

 Mrs. Beatrice Swire, of Chelwood Gate, Sussex ; Frl. Margarethe 

 Schiinhoff, of Hanover; Mme. Marguerite Berriot, of Paris; Mme. 

 Marjorie de Aguirre, of Madrid; and Miss Clara Reisner, of New 

 York. 



We have seen that Leon Pinelo praised our MS as the most valu- 

 able contribution yet made to the literatvire on the Indies. Even with 

 a delay of 300 years in its publication, it is not to be considered for 

 a moment as merely a historical curiosity. Of course its prime interest 

 is geographical ; it is a descriptive itinerary of Spanish America ; and 

 Vazquez' painstaking account, a veritable Baedeker, will be authori- 

 tative in the whole field of historical geography. But it is full of 

 original documents. Whole chapters are taken up by the vivid stories 

 of the ill-fated Amazon expedition of Gen. Pedro de Ursua and the 

 subsequent career of the freebooter Lope de Aguirre (1198 flf. ), the 

 awe-inspiring eruption of the Ubinas volcano near Arequipa in 1600 

 (1397 ff.), and the destructive Potosi flood of 1626 (1668 fif.). 

 Vazquez gives us the text of several official letters (275, 414, 416, 

 557) ; and he takes pleasure in recounting the life stories of various 

 doughty pioneers, like Hernando de Cifontes (1611 f.), in order, as 

 he says after his praise of early Venezuelan explorers, that the memory 

 of such men should not perish but that they might receive the reward 

 of their labors (269). Botanists will revel in the detailed descriptions 

 of trees and other plants, with his valuable accounts of their use in 

 Indian medicine ; specially noteworthy are his surprise when con- 

 fronted by the milk tree (283) and his tribute to the efficacy of qui- 

 nine (1717) and the universal usefulness of the coconut palm in the 

 East Indies (779) ; the Philippines come within his scope, since they 

 were dependent on the Spanish authorities in Mexico City. He takes 

 keen interest also in the manufacture of vegetable products, like indigo 

 (674 ff.). He was fascinated by the mines at Huancavelica, Oruro, 

 Potosi and elsewhere, and his detailed account is a valuable supplement 

 to Acosta (1467) — in fact, the fullest survey of early mining in 

 South America. 



But the greatest interest aroused by the resurrection of Vazquez 

 has been among the anthropologists ; in fact, the first publication of 

 any part of the text was the chapters on the customs of the Arawak 

 and Carib Indians (183-187), with a Dutch translation by C. H. 

 De Goeje in "De West-Indische Gids," 193 1. Still more important 

 perhaps are the data which he gives on the little-known Pampas, 

 Charruas, and Guaicuru Indians; the index references to these and 



