Note 41 — INTRODUCTION.

Collections like that of Icazbalceta on Mexico may be barely mentioned in this place, since their characteristics can better be defined in more special relations. Prescott had eight thousand manuscript pages of copies of documents relating to Mexico and Peru. Cf. Preface to his Mexico. In 1792 Father Manuel de la Vega collected in Mexico thirty-two folio volumes of papers, in obedience to an order of the Spanish Government to gather all documents to be found in New Spain “fitted to illustrate the antiquities, geography, civil, ecclesiastical, and natural history of America,” and transmit copies of them to Madrid (Prescott, Mexico, iii. 409).