There is still another authority used in this work, Gonzalo
Fernandez de Oviedo, of whom I have given an account elsewhere;
and the reader curious in the matter will permit me to refer him
for a critical notice of his life and writings to the Conquest of
Mexico, Book 4, Postscript. - His account of Peru is incorporated
into his great work, Natural e General Historia de las Indias,
Ms., where it forms the forty-sixth and forty-seventh books. It
extends from Pizarro's landing at Tumbez to Almagro's return from
Chili, and thus covers the entire portion of what may be called
the conquest of the country. The style of its execution,
corresponding with that of the residue of the work to which it
belongs, affords no ground for criticism different from that
already passed on the general character of Oviedo's writings.
This eminent person was at once a scholar and a man of the world.
Living much at court, and familiar with persons of the highest
distinction in Castile, he yet passed much of his time in the
colonies, and thus added the fruits of personal experience to
what he had gained from the reports of others. His curiosity was
indefatigable, extending to every department of natural science,
as well as to the civil and personal history of the colonists.
He was, at once, their Pliny and their Tacitus. His works abound
in portraitures of character, sketched with freedom and
animation. His reflections are piquant, and often rise to a
philosophic tone, which discards the usual trammels of the age;
and the progress of the story is varied by a multiplicity of
personal anecdotes, that give a rapid insight into the characters
of the parties.
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