The literary execution of the
work, moreover, is highly respectable, sometimes even rich and
picturesque; and the author describes the grand and beautiful
scenery of the Cordilleras with a sensibility to its charms, not
often found in the tasteless topographer, still less often in the
rude Conqueror.
Cieza de Leon came to the New World, as he informs us, at the
early age of thirteen. But it is not till Gasca's time that we
find his name enrolled among the actors in the busy scenes of
civil strife, when he accompanied the president in his campaign
against Gonzalo Pizarro. His Chronicle, or, at least, the notes
for it, was compiled in such leisure as he could snatch from his
more stirring avocations; and after ten years from the time he
undertook it, the First Part - all we have - was completed in
1550, when the author had reached only the age of thirty-two. It
appeared at Seville in 1553, and the following year at Antwerp;
while an Italian translation, printed at Rome, in 1555, attested
the rapid celebrity of the work. The edition of Antwerp - the
one used by me in this compilation - is in the duodecimo form,
exceedingly well printed, and garnished with wood-cuts, in which
Satan, - for the author had a full measure of the ancient
credulity, - with his usual bugbear accompaniments, frequently
appears in bodily presence. In the Preface, Cieza announces his
purpose to continue the work in three other parts, illustrating
respectively the ancient history of the country under the Incas,
its conquest by the Spaniards, and the civil wars which ensued.
Pages:
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