Note 805 — Chapter XXVII
Reading edition
“Argentina, Conquista del Rio de la Plata y Tucuman, y otros Sucesos del Peru,” Lisboa, 1602, 4to. There is a love-story in Canto XII., and some talk about enchantments elsewhere; but, with a few such slight exceptions, the poem is evidently pretty good geography, and the best history the author could collect on the spot. I know it only in the reprint of Barcia, who takes it into his collection entirely for its historical claims.
One thing has much struck me in this and all the poems written by Spaniards on their conquests in America, and especially by those who visited the countries they celebrate. It is, that there are no proper sketches of the peculiar scenery through which they passed, though much of it is among the most beautiful and grand that exists on the globe, and must have been filling them constantly with new wonder. The truth is, that, when they describe woods and rivers and mountains, their descriptions would as well fit the Pyrenees or the Guadalquivir as they do Mexico, the Andes, or the Amazon. Perhaps this deficiency is connected with the same causes that have prevented Spain from ever producing a great landscape painter.