Chapter XII

THE EARLY YEARS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

I. _Jorge Juan y Santacilla and Antonio de Ulloa._ II. _Alonso
de Zamora and José de Oviedo y Baños._ III. _Joseph Luis
Cisneros and Francisca Josefa de Castillo y Guevara._ IV.
_Pedro de Peralta Barnuevo and Juan de Mira._ V. _Juan Rivero,
José Cassani and Pedro Gumilla._ VI. _Some minor ecclesiastical
writers._

I

[Sidenote: French in South America]

[Sidenote: Feuillée and Frezier]

[Sidenote: Juan and Ulloa]

The dependence of Philip V on Louis XIV opened to the French an opportunity for commerce and scientific investigation in Spanish South America. In the first fifteen years of the eighteenth century French merchants took advantage of their opportunity and sent an unprecedented amount of exports in a large number of ships from French ports to the ports of Chile and Peru. In these early decades of the century the French undertook also scientific investigations in South America. Feuillée and Frezier led the way, and they were followed by La Condamine’s expedition to Ecuador, in which Spanish co-operation was represented by Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa. After the completion of the measurements near Quito Juan and Ulloa made elaborate inquiries into the political and social condition of the colonies. The results of these observations and researches were set forth in two important documents: _Noticias secretas de América_ and their _Relación histórica del viaje a la América_.

[Sidenote: _Noticias secretas_]

The former is an extensive report designed for the instruction of the king. It was not generally known until it was published in London by David Barry in 1826. It is the most frank and searching examination of the affairs of the colonies that has come down from the colonial period. It presents the abuses of the courts, the civil employees, the corregidores, and the clergy. It treats, moreover, of the contraband trade, the frauds that appeared in the various branches of the administration, the scandalous acts of the officials, and the oppression and cruelty of the Spaniards in their dealing with the Indians. It describes the state of the ports and the lack of arms and of other means for defending the coast against invaders, and sets forth the increasing hostility between the Spaniards and the creoles. It makes exceedingly damaging specifications as to the treatment which the Indians received at the hands of the corregidores, the manufacturers, and the priests. The following passages from the _Noticias secretas_ illustrate this subject:

“It was ordered that the corregidores might introduce a quantity of such articles as were suited to the needs of the Indians and distribute these articles among them at moderate prices, in order that, having implements for labour, they might shake off the apathy which is innate in their constitution, and make the exertion requisite for paying their tribute and supporting themselves.

[Sidenote: Distribution by Corregidores]

“The articles of distribution are chiefly mules, foreign and domestic goods, and produce. The corregidores who are attached to the viceroyalty of Lima must necessarily go to that city to take out a licence and to receive their despatch from the viceroy in order to be inducted into office; and as Lima is the principal depôt of the trade of Peru, it is in that city that an assortment of articles for distribution is to be made, and for this purpose they take the goods required from the shop of some merchant or trader on credit, at an exorbitant price; for, as the traders are aware of the enormous profits the corregidores make in the sale, they raise the prices of the goods in order to have a share in the speculation. The corregidores have no money before they come into office, and, being unable to purchase for cash, they are obliged to submit to any terms which the creditor may prescribe, since they are under great obligations, on account of the money which the merchant is to lend them for the purchase of the mules required for transportation.

[Sidenote: Corregidor’s wares]

[Sidenote: Despair of the Indians]

“As soon as the corregidor comes within his jurisdiction, the first act of his administration is to take a census of the Indians according to their towns and villages. Proceeding to this duty in person, and taking with him the articles of merchandise to be distributed, he goes on, apportioning the quantity and kind he selects for every Indian, and affixing to each article its price, just as suits his caprice, the poor Indians being wholly ignorant of what is to fall to their lot, or how much it is to cost them. As soon as he has finished distributing in one village, he transfers the whole assortment to the cacique, with an exact inventory of the articles belonging to each individual, from the cacique himself to the most humble of all those who are to pay tribute; and the corregidor proceeds to another village in order to continue the distribution. It is a time of anguish both for the cacique and the Indians, when they look at the quantity, quality, and prices of these goods. In vain does the cacique remonstrate, and to no purpose do the Indians raise their clamours; on the one hand, they maintain that their means are not adequate to such a quantity of merchandise as is assigned to them, being absolutely unable to pay for it; again, they urge that goods of such a description are utterly useless to them, and that the price is so exorbitant as to exceed anything they had ever paid before. The corregidor remains inexorable and the Indians are obliged to take whatever has been allotted to them, however repugnant it may be to their wishes, and however straitened they are for want of means to make the payments; for these payments become due simultaneously with the tribute money, and the same penalty is imposed for failure to meet one as the other. All the payments of the first distribution must be made within two years and a half, to make way for the second, which usually does not contain so many wares as the first” (p. 240).

The statement concerning the textile works is equally positive:

“In former years woollen manufacture was confined to the province of Quito; but it has been recently introduced into other districts, although the articles manufactured in the provinces south of Quito are nothing but coarse cloths of very ordinary texture. In Cajamarca there are looms for the manufacture of cotton goods....

[Sidenote: Indians in the obrajes]

[Sidenote: Punishment of the Indians]

“The labour of the obraje, or manufactory, begins before the day dawns, at which time every Indian takes his place at the piece which is in process of weaving and the tasks of the day are distributed as may be expedient; and when this process is concluded, the owner of the house closes the door, and leaves them immured as in a prison. At midday the door is opened for the women to go in with their scanty allowance of food, which is soon partaken, and they are again locked in. When the darkness of the night no longer permits them to work, the owner goes round to gather up the stints; those who have not been able to finish, in spite of apologies or reasonings, are punished with indescribable cruelty: and those unfeeling men, as if transformed into merciless savages, inflict upon the wretched Indians lashes by the hundred, for they use no other method of counting; and to complete the punishment, they remand them again to the workshop: and although the whole building is a prison-house, a portion of it is reserved for fetters and instruments of torture, where they are punished with greater indignity than could be practised towards the most delinquent slaves....

“We frequently met the Indians on the highway, tied by the hair to the tail of a horse, on which a mestizo is mounted, who is conveying them to the workshops, and perhaps for the trivial offence of having evaded the tyranny of the overseer, from fear of punishment. Let what will be said of the cruelty practised by the patrons (encomenderos) towards the Indians at the commencement of the conquest, we cannot persuade ourselves, after what we have witnessed, that it could ever have been carried to the extent it now is by the Spaniards and mestizos.” (pp. 276, 279.)

Some paragraphs of the _Noticias secretas_ refer to the immorality of the clergy:

[Sidenote: Corruption of the clergy]

“The persons who compose the two orders of the clergy are guilty of such licentiousness, that making due allowance for the frailties to which human nature is liable and the weakness to which men of every class are subject, it would appear that those ecclesiastics regard it as their peculiar privilege to go before all others in the career of vice; for while they are under the most sacred obligations not only to practise virtue, but to correct the errors incident to frail nature, it is they who, by their pernicious example, sanction the practice of iniquity, and in a measure divest it of its heinous nature.

“The parish priests are extremely vicious in their habits; but, whether it happens that an error or crime in them attracts less notice, or whether they are more careful to conceal it, or for both reasons, which is the more probable, disgraceful as the consequences are known to be, they never reach such a degree of scandal as do those of the monks; for the latter, from the first step they take, and even without leaving the monasteries, pursue a course of conduct so notorious and shameful that it becomes offensive in the extreme, and fills the mind with horror.

[Sidenote: Fandangoes of the religious]

“The fandangoes or balls are usually devised by the members of the religious orders, or more properly by those who call themselves religious, although, in fact, they are far from being so; for it is they who pay the expense, who attend in company with their concubines, and who get up the fray in their own houses. Simultaneously with the dance, the immoderate use of ardent spirits begins, and the entertainment is gradually converted into acts of impropriety so unseemly and lewd, that it would be presumption even to speak of them, and a want of delicacy to stain the narrative with such a record of obscenities; and, letting them lie hid in the region of silence, we shall only remark that, whatever the spirit of malice could invent in respect to this subject, great as it might be, it could never fathom that abyss into which those corrupt minds are plunged, nor give any adequate idea of the degree of excess to which debauchery and crime are carried.” (pp. 490, 497.)

[Sidenote: _Relación histórica_]

The _Relación histórica_, by Juan and Ulloa the result of extensive journeys of investigation made by order of the king, was originally published in Madrid in 1748. It has been reprinted many times, and translations of it have appeared in various languages. An English translation was issued in London in 1758, entitled _A Voyage to South America_. A small volume by Ulloa called _Entretenimientos_ (1772) treats of the geography and productions of Peru and Ecuador, the antiquities of these countries, the customs, language, and religion of the Indians, with suggestions as to the means of increasing the population of America.

[Sidenote: Ulloa’s public career]

In the course of his public career Ulloa rose to the rank of lieutenant-general. He was born in Seville in 1716. His studies prepared him for the position of an officer in the navy, and when Philip V granted the request of Louis XV to be permitted to send a body of scientists to measure an arc of the meridian under the equator in Ecuador, Antonio de Ulloa and Jorge Juan were appointed to join the commission. Ulloa gained distinction by his scientific investigations, and became a member of the scientific societies of London, Paris, Berlin, and Stockholm. From time to time he was charged with various official duties by the government of Spain, and in 1763, when Louisiana was ceded to Spain, Ulloa was appointed to take possession of the country and organize its administration, thus becoming its first Spanish governor.

[Sidenote: _Relación_ and _Noticias_]

The _Relación histórica_ is an excellent account of Spanish South America as it was near the middle of the eighteenth century, by two men who, although special commissioners appointed by the king, were apparently more disposed to tell the truth than to please their royal master. Designed for the general public, this work is less severe in tone than the _Noticias secretas_, which was written for the instruction of the king and his ministers. Here is a description of the fair at Porto Bello from the _Relación histórica_.

[Sidenote: The fair of Porto Bello]

“The town of Porto Bello, so thinly inhabited, by reason of its noxious air, the scarcity of provisions, and the barrenness of the soil, becomes, at the time of the galleons, one of the most populous places in all South America. Its situation on the isthmus, betwixt the south and the north sea, the goodness of its harbour, and its small distance from Panama have given it the preference for the rendezvous of the joint commerce of Spain and Peru, at its fair.

“On advice being received at Carthagena, that the Peru fleet had unloaded at Panama, the galleons made the best of their way to Porto Bello, in order to avoid the distempers which have their source from idleness. The concourse of people, on this occasion, is such, as to raise the rent of lodging to an excessive degree; a middling chamber, with a closet, lets, during the fair, for a thousand crowns, and some large houses, for four, five or six thousand.

“The ships are no sooner moored in the harbour than the first work is to erect, in the square, a tent made of the ship’s sails, for receiving the cargo; at which the proprietors of the goods are present, in order to find their bales, by the marks which distinguish them. These bales are drawn on sledges to their respective places, by the crews of every ship, and the money given them is proportionally divided.

[Sidenote: Arrival of gold from Perú]

“Whilst the seamen and European traders are thus employed, the land is covered with droves of mules from Panama, each drove consisting of above an hundred, loaded with chests of gold and silver, on account of the merchants of Peru. Some unload them at the exchange, others in the middle of the square; yet amidst the hurry and confusion of such crowds, no theft, loss, or disturbance is ever known. He who has seen this place during the tiempo muerto, or dead time, solitary, poor, and a perpetual silence reigning everywhere, the harbour quite empty, and everyplace wearing a melancholy aspect, must be filled with astonishment at the sudden change, to see the bustling multitudes, every house crowded, the square and the streets encumbered with bales and chests of gold, and silver of all kinds; the harbour full of ships and vessels, some bringing by way of Río de Chape, the goods of Peru, as cacao, quinquina, or Jesuit’s bark, vicuña wool, and bezoar stones; others coming from Carthagena, loaded with provisions; and thus a spot, at all other times detested for its deleterious qualities becomes the staple of the riches of the old and new world, and the scene of one of the most considerable branches of commerce in the whole earth.

[Sidenote: Organization of the trading]

“The ships being unloaded, and the merchants of Peru, together with the president of Panama, arrived, the fair comes under deliberation. And for this purpose the deputies of the several parties, repair on board the commodore of the galleons, where, in presence of the commodore, and the president of Panama, the former as patron of the Europeans, and the latter, of the Peruvians, the prices of the several kinds of merchandise are settled; and all preliminaries being adjusted in three or four meetings, the contracts are signed, and made public, that everyone may conform himself to them in the sale of his effects. Thus all fraud is precluded. The purchases and sales, as likewise the exchanges of money, are transacted by brokers, embarking their chests of money, and those of Peru, sending away the goods they have purchased in vessels called chatas and bongos, up the river, Chagre; and thus the fair of Porto Bello ends.” (Eng. tr. I, 101.)

II

[Sidenote: Alonso de Zamora]

[Sidenote: Character of Zamora’s book]

Alonso de Zamora is conspicuous among the historians who wrote in the early part of the eighteenth century: His _Historia de la provincia de San Antonino del nuevo reino de Granada del orden de Predicadores_ (Barcelona, 1701) is called a first volume, but there is no adequate evidence that a second volume was ever written. The author was born in Bogotá in 1660. He entered the Dominican order in his native city, studied at the University of St. Thomas, and subsequently undertook the work of a missionary. His fame as a theologian and as a writer and preacher doubtless contributed to his appointment, in 1690, as chronicler of his order. He was especially commissioned to write a general history of the ecclesiastical province, then under the direction of the provincial Antonio Choche. At this time Quesada’s _Compendio historial_ was still in existence, and Zamora used it as a source of information. In 1696 he completed his manuscript and sent it to Spain for publication. In view of the circumstances under which Zamora wrote and the nature of his subject, one might very well expect that his book would be a panegyric on the history and character of his order; and the book justifies such an expectation. The author magnified the influences and services of ecclesiastics in promoting civilization in America, which secular opinion had tended to belittle. In his style and the arrangement of his material he falls short of the excellence attained by Piedrahita.[153]

[Sidenote: Oviedo y Baños]

[Sidenote: _Conquista de Venezuela_]

A higher standard was reached by José de Oviedo y Baños in his _Historia de la conquista y población de la provincia de Venezuela_. This author was born in Bogotá in 1674, but spent the greater part of his life in Venezuela, and died at Caracas, where his _Historia_ was written. The first volume was printed in Madrid in 1723. The complete work was issued in the _Biblioteca de los americanistas_ (Madrid, 1885), in two volumes, preceded by an introduction by Cesáreo Fernández Duro, in which he says that this narration was made with the impartiality and the high critical spirit of the true historian and forms a source from which those who study the history of Caracas are compelled to draw. Diego, a brother of José de Oviedo, was an oidor in Guatemala, then promoted to the audiencia of Mexico, and later was a member of the Council of the Indies. He wrote a commentary in two volumes on the _Recopilación castellana_.

[Sidenote: The bishop of Caracas]

[Sidenote: Vicente de Oviedo]

Diego de Baños y Sotomayor, an uncle of the historian, became bishop of Caracas. Educated in Bogotá, he was instrumental in bringing some rays of intellectual light into Caracas after decades of obscurity. He founded the Colegio Seminario de Santa Rosa, and left as evidence of his literary activity the _Constituciones sinodales del obispado de Venezuela_, published at Madrid in 1698. Another writer bearing the name Oviedo, but of a family distinct from the foregoing, has left a long list of volumes on ecclesiastical subjects. This was Vicente de Oviedo. He studied at the college of San Bartolomé in Bogotá, and for more than forty years was parish priest in various towns of the viceroyalty of New Granada. Efforts to secure the publication of his encyclopedic work in eleven volumes met with the insurmountable opposition of the Spanish government, the grounds of this opposition being utterances unfavourable to the dignity of the monarchy.[154]

[Sidenote: Medrano’s _Granada_]

To the period embracing the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth century belongs the _Historia del nuevo reino de Granada_, by Francisco de Medrano, of the Franciscan order. But these were unfruitful years in the literary history of New Granada. The principal literary products were chiefly such as were especially demanded by readers in the colonies, sermons and lives of saints.[155]

III

[Sidenote: Cisneros of Venezuela]

The publisher of the “collection of rare and curious books treating of America” issued in 1912, as the twenty-first volume of the collection, Joseph Luis Cisneros’ _Descripción exacta de la provincia de Venezuela_. The editor of this reprint sets forth his conclusions concerning the author, which he holds were justified by the text of the work itself. These are that Cisneros was born in Venezuela some time between 1710 and 1715; that he was a trader and, as an agent of the Royal Guipuzcoa Company, for a period of twenty-five years traversed and retraversed the province of Venezuela, buying and selling a great variety of commodities; that he made a number of visits to the island of Curaçao, the province of Maracaybo and Santa Marta in New Granada; that he made three trips on the Orinoco to the Dutch towns of Essequibo and Surinam; and that his book was published at Valencia in Venezuela, in spite of the opinion of Arístides Rojas that the Valencia announced on the title-page as the place of publication was the Valencia of Spain, not the Venezuelan city.

The author displays, as he might be expected to do considering his occupation, extensive and detailed information concerning the state and the products of the country, the markets, and the prices, and this feature of his little book constitutes it a contemporary contribution to the economic history of the province of Venezuela under Spanish rule. Moreover, the simplicity of of the style and the presence of terms especially in use among traders would seem to offer further evidence of the writer’s practical experience in commercial affairs.

[Sidenote: Trade of Venezuela]

The following reference to the foreign trade of the province, taken in connection with his remarks on the internal commerce, indicate a practical familiarity with Venezuela’s economic conditions.

“The city of Caracas has a population of somewhat more than twenty-six thousand, in which there are many illustrious families known in Europe; it carries on commerce with the Royal Guipuzcoa Company, which takes the products of the province in exchange for clothing and food-stuffs, which it brings from Spain; it has also trade with Mexico, comprising a large amount of cacao carried from the port of La Guayra to Vera Cruz, bringing back the greater part of its compensation in silver bullion, and the rest in copper, flour, and various products of that country. At present there are fourteen ships engaged in this trade.

[Sidenote: Caracas and the Islands]

“The city or province has also commerce with the Canary Islands, which, in the same manner, receive cacao, loading their ships with it for the return voyage; they are also desirous of getting silver pesos, of which they carry away large quantities given to them in exchange for the products of their country, which are fine wines, grapes and certain liquors, with all kinds of dried fruit. They also introduce great quantities of taffeta, stockings, and all kinds of silk, a ship arriving once a year. Caracas has, moreover, trade with the Windward Islands, Havana, Santo Domingo, Puerto Rico, Margarita, and Cumaná. The Venezuelans carry on this commerce by sending out certain amounts of cacao, hides, tallow, and various other products of the province not desired by the Royal company, and bringing back in return silver bullion and products of those islands.” (p. 59.)

[Sidenote: Francisca Josefa de Castillo]

The large majority of the men who have hitherto figured in the literary history of New Granada have either been members of the religious orders or functionaries of the Church in some other relation. In the person of Francisca Josefa de Castillo y Guevara a nun appears, who, according to Menéndez y Pelayo, “wrote in prose worthy of Santa Teresa.” She was born in Bogotá on October 8, 1671, entered the convent of Santa Clara at Tunja in 1689, and died there in 1742. She was afflicted with rickets, and was an invalid from her childhood. In the convent she was encouraged by her confessor to write her sentiments and reflections on her life. Her papers sent to her confessor in obedience to his suggestion gradually accumulated, and were later published in two more or less independent works. These were _Vida de la venerable madre Francisca Josefa de la Concepción, escrita por ella_, and _Sentimientos espirituales de la V. M. Francisca Josefa_. Francisca’s early reading is said to have been largely plays, but in the convent she read the writings of Santa Teresa. Confined by her parents and by those persons who controlled her activity to the limited education that was thought to be becoming a woman in the Spanish colonies, her native intelligence enabled her to obtain a profound insight into certain phases of life, and to acquire a style of writing that persuaded the Colombian critic, Vergara, to declare that “Madre Castillo is the most notable writer whom we possess; her style and her language place her by the side of Santa Teresa.”[156]

IV

[Sidenote: _Lima fundada_]

[Sidenote: Peralta’s writings]

In the “poema heroico” called _Lima fundada o conquista del Perú_, we have an echo of the earlier historical narratives in verse. The author, Pedro José de Peralta Barnuevo Rocha y Benavides, was born in Lima in 1663, and during a great part of a long life he was a member of the University of San Marcos, at first as professor of mathematics. He was rector of the university for the years 1715, 1716 and 1717. He served as cosmographer from 1708 to 1748. He was a lawyer, directed an academy which he had founded, was for many years engineer-in-chief of Peru, and in this capacity planned and directed important works at the port of Callao. For his great and varied learning Peralta’s contemporaries appear to have held him in high esteem, and later opinion has confirmed their view. The statement in Mendiburu’s _Diccionario histórico-biográfico del Perú_ is that Peralta “was a master of six languages, and in the most of them he wrote poetry correctly and in good taste; he was well versed in sacred and profane history, was a profound mathematician, chemist, botanist, and student in medicine; and his studies in jurisprudence and canonical and theological matters he carried as far as the first professors of his time.” (VI, 265.) The long list of his work, moreover, suggests unusual capacity and attainments.[157]

[Sidenote: Quality of _Lima fundada_]

_Lima fundada_, in ten cantos embracing somewhat more than ten thousand lines, treats of the conquest of Peru from Pizarro’s invasion to the overthrow of Almagro. In order that the thought may seem to move on an exalted plane, and the stanzas differentiate themselves from ordinary prose, the statements of fact are often made vague and roundabout, and the narration is abundantly sprinkled with intensifying adjectives. The hero is always “the great Pizarro” or “the great marquis,” and the soldiers are the “illustrious troops.” Large numbers of Grecian mythological characters are drawn into the service; the names of Ulysses, Alcibiades, Trajan and Socrates are woven familiarly into the lines; and the impression is made that the author knew too much to be a successful poet. Persons who seek for an elevated and inspiring form of genuine poetry in these three hundred and eighty pages of verses will hardly find it.

[Sidenote: _Armas antárticas_]

The twenty cantos of _Armas antárticas_ constitute a document that is properly classed with _Lima fundada_. It was written by Juan de Mira. Unless printed since my latest information concerning it, it is still in manuscript in the National Library of Madrid. It was probably written in Lima between 1612 and 1615, and the writer’s aim appears to have been to prevent the deeds of the Spaniards in conquering, pacifying and defending Peru from “remaining hidden in the darkness of forgetfulness.”[158]

The opening octave makes a general announcement of the author’s theme:

Las armas y proezas militares
De españoles católicos valientes,
Que por ignotos y soberbios mares
Fueron a dominar remotas gentes,
Poniendo al verbo eterno en los altares
De oráculos gentílicos, espanto
Eran del indio, ahora mudos, canto.[159]

[Sidenote: Gathering the ransom]

And the following lines describe the gathering of the gold for Atahualpa’s ransom:

... al instante
Chasquis despacha el inca a diferentes
Partes, para quel oro rutilante
Traigan con brevedad todas sus gentes;
No hay noble, no hay cacique, no hay infante,
No hay niños, no hay mujeres, no hay sirvientes
Que así como las próvidas hormigas
No traigan a la sala sus espigas.[160]

V

[Sidenote: Missions of the Llanos]

Among the Indians of the Llanos the Jesuits undertook to carry out a plan of missionary effort similar to that carried out in Paraguay. The region was divided into a number of districts, or partidos, the partido of Casanare, that of the Orinoco, and that of the Meta. These were under the general government of a procurador, who was under the superior direction of the provincial appointed at Rome to govern the province of Bogotá. During his term of three years the provincial was required to visit the missions at least once, or to send an inspector bearing the title of vice-provincial, who was commissioned to inquire into the state of the missions and to examine their records and accounts. In the last decades of the seventeenth century and later the government supported at each mission a small number of soldiers to assist the missionaries and to ward off hostile attacks. The success of these missions depended upon the establishment of such conditions that they would be economically independent, and for this purpose the missions became proprietors of extensive herds.

[Sidenote: Rivero’s _Historia de las misiones_]

[Sidenote: Rivero as a missionary]

Juan Rivero’s _Historia de las misiones de los llanos de Casanare y los ríos Orinoco y Meta_, written in 1736, is an important source of information concerning the history of these missions. It was printed in Bogotá in 1883, after it had remained in manuscript about one hundred and fifty years. The author was born in Miraflores de la Sierra, in Spain, August 15, 1681. He entered the Society of Jesus as a youth, and was sent to Bogotá in 1704. He began his missionary work at Tunja, but, on account of illness caused by the low temperature of the plateau, he was transferred to the college at Honda and later to that at Mompox. He was still moved by a desire for missionary work among the Indians, and, therefore, petitioned his superiors to send him to the Llanos. His petition was granted, and in 1720 he set out for the plains of Casanare. He became exceptionally proficient in a knowledge of the Indian languages, which he was able to make use of in the confessional and in preaching. He held vigorously to the opinion that the Indians could be readily induced to adopt the faith of the Church, and that this act would transform them into civilized men and women. Like many of his countrymen and later workers for social betterment, he was a single-force reformer.

[Sidenote: Cassani and Gumilla]

Other writers took up the subject that had engaged the attention of Rivero and wrote of the region of the Orinoco. Padre José Cassani, writing of the missions, used Rivero’s manuscript extensively, making it the basis of his work. Cassani’s _Historia de la Provincia de la Compañía de Jesús del Nuevo Reino de Granada_ is uncritical and disfigured by marvellous credulity. It was published in 1741. Gumilla’s _El Orinoco ilustrado_ was also published in 1741, and a second edition was issued in 1745. On the title-page of his book Gumilla describes himself as a “member of the Society of Jesus, missionary, superior of the missions of the Orinoco, Meta, and Casanare, calificador and consultor of the Holy Tribunal of the Inquisition of Cartagena of the Indies, synodal examiner of the bishopric of Cartagena, some time provincial of the province of New Granada, and actual procurador of the missions and the provinces.” The title-page furnishes, moreover, a sufficient account of the contents of the book: “Natural, civil, and geographical history of this great river, and of its abundant tributaries; government, uses, and customs of the Indians, with new and useful accounts of animals, trees, fruits, oils, resins, herbs, and medical roots.”

VI

[Sidenote: Torres’ _Crónica de la provincia peruana_]

[Sidenote: _Tesoros de las Indias_]

[Sidenote: Nicolás de la Rosa]

Each of the religious orders had its chronicler, whose writings necessarily involved more or less extensive accounts of the secular events of the societies in which they were established. Bernardo Torres, an Augustinian, secretary of the province of Lima, prior of the monastery of Chuquisaca, and sometime professor in the University of San Marcos, wrote the _Crónica de la provincia peruana_, in eight books, which was published in Lima in 1657. A continuation of this work in two volumes, extending to the year 1721, was written by Padre Juan Teodoro Vásquez. The Dominican Antonio de Aguiar wrote the history of the Dominicans. Domingo Marín, in his _Estado de los misiones en Chile_, undertook to defend the Jesuits against their detractors. The Dominican, Meléndez, set forth the achievements of his order in _Tesoros verdaderos de las Indias_. The Franciscan, Francisco Javier Ramírez, following a suggestion from Aguiar, magnified the services of the Franciscans in the _Cronicón sacro-imperial de Chile_. The _Floresta de la santa iglesia Catedral de Santa Marta_, by Ensign José Nicolás de la Rosa, derives its historical data from the writings of Piedrahita, Simón, and Zamora and certain documents from the cathedral. In addition to the topics suggested by the title, it contains items of information concerning the Indians inhabiting the region about Santa Marta. In spite of its indifferent literary quality and “pésimo gusto literario,” it has been twice printed, once in 1756 and again in 1833. After 1767 ecclesiastical writers in the colonies lacked both the breadth of vision and the literary attainments of their predecessors.[161]

[Sidenote: Antonio Julián]

[Sidenote: _La Perla de América_]

Antonio Julián is hardly less widely known than Cassani and Gumilla. He lived for many years in New Granada, chiefly at Santa Marta. He travelled extensively in the province, but left America before the expulsion of his order. Neither the place nor the date of his birth is known. In his enforced retirement from his missionary labours he wrote a number of works concerning the part of the Indies with which he had become especially familiar. Of these the most frequently referred to is _La Perla de América, Provincia de Santa-marta reconocida, observada y expuesta en discursos históricos_. It was published at Madrid in 1787. Of the others, not printed, perhaps the most noteworthy is _Historia geográfica del río Magdalena, y de todas las provincias que le tributan de una banda y otra sus ríos_.

[Sidenote: Juan Bautista Sánchez]

Few Jesuits who had entered the American field were withdrawn before 1767. Juan Bautista Sánchez shared in the enforced migration under the decree of expulsion. He was born in Peru, and entered the Society in 1729 at the age of fifteen. In Peru he acquired distinction, serving as rector of the Jesuit colleges of Cuzco and Lima. He died in 1774 after a residence of seven years in Europe. The list of his writings seems to indicate that his official duties did not encroach largely upon his time for writing.[162]