Note I‑36 — Chapter I · PIZARRO AND PERU. 1524-1544.

It is scarcely necessary to say that the best history of the Peruvian conquest, indeed the only one that can lay claims to fairness and completeness, is Mr Prescott's. The chief original authorities have already been given. Pizarro forms a leading figure in Quintana, Vidas de Españoles Célebres, published at Madrid in 1807, 1830, 1833, in three volumes, reprinted at Paris in 1845. Celebrated as a poet and dramatist since 1801, Quintana intended to produce a lengthy series of biographies of the national heroes who had already entered into his song; but the demands of other studies and of his public duties as censor, director de estudios, and as senator, interfered with his work, and nine lives are all that have been recorded. While declaring his intention to be impartial and instructive he is often led by his innate predilection for hero and word painting, to mingle poetic fancy with biographic facts. The list may be greatly swollen by such works as Acosta, Hist. Ind.; Velasco, Hist. Quito; Ercilla, La Araucana; Levinius Apollonius, Peruuiæ Regionis; Burney's Dis. South Sea, i. 120; Galvano's Discov., 34-9; Robertson's Hist. Am., ii. 151; La Harpe, Voy., x. 259-458, xi. 5 et seq.; Voys., Nouv. Bib. des Voys., xii. 131-67; Kerr's Col. Voy., iv. 328-464; Harris, Col. Voy., i. 788-97, iv. 464-512, v. 1-217; Molina, Hist. Chile, Madrid, 1788, i.-ii.; March y Labores, Hist. Marina, ii. 123-5; Russell's Hist. Am., i. 264-301; Francisco Pizarro, in Quintana, Vidas, 71-171; Andagoya, Carta al Rey, Oct. 22, 1536; Voy. Cur. and Rare, 34; Campbell's Span. Am., 44-9; S. Am. and Mex., i. 45-9; Descrip. de Am., 38-40; Helps' Span. Conq., iii. 419-58; Snowden's Am., 141-7; Sammlung aller Reisebesch., xv. 36-46; Voys., A New Col., i. 365-7; Guzman's Life, 84-134; Hakluyt's Voy., iii. 798-9; Piedrahita, Hist. Gen., 438-40; Harper's Mag., xix. 434; Domingo de Eraso, in Doc. Hist. Esp., l. 220-31; Barrionuevo, Inform., in Pacheco and Cárdenas, Col. Doc., x. 144-52; Torquemada, i. 611; and the many royal cédulas and letters of the Pizarros and others.