As the Conquest of Mexico has occupied the pens of Solís and of Robertson,
two of the ablest historians of their respective nations, it might seem that little
could remain at the present day to be gleaned by the historical inquirer. But
Robertson's narrative is necessarily brief, forming only part of a more extended
work; and neither the British nor the Castilian author was provided with the
important materials for relating this event which have been since assembled
by the industry of Spanish scholars. The scholar who led the way in these
researches was Don Juan Baptista Muñoz, the celebrated historiographer of
the Indies, who, by a royal edict, was allowed free access to the national
archives, and to all libraries, public, private, and monastic, in the kingdom and
its colonies. The result of his long labours was a vast body of materials, of
which unhappily he did not live to reap the benefit himself. His manuscripts
were deposited, after his death, in the archives of the Royal Academy of History
at Madrid; and that collection was subsequently augmented by the manuscripts
of Don Vargas Ponçe, President of the Academy, obtained, like those of Muñoz,
from different quarters, but especially from the archives of the Indies at Seville.

On my application to the Academy, in 1838, for permission to copy that part
of this inestimable collection relating to Mexico and Peru, it was freely acceded
to, and an eminent German scholar, one of their own number, was appointed
to superintend the collation and transcription of the manuscripts; and this,
it may be added, before I had any claim on the courtesy of that respectable
body, as one of its associates. This conduct shows the advance of a liberal
spirit in the Peninsula since the time of Dr. Robertson, who complains that
he was denied admission to the most important public repositories. The favour
with which my own application was regarded, however, must chiefly be attri-
buted to the kind offices of the venerable President of the Academy, Don
Martin Fernandez de Navarrete; a scholar whose personal character has
secured to him the same high consideration at home which his literary labours
have obtained abroad. To this eminent person I am under still further obli-
gations, for the free use which he has allowed me to make of his own manu-
scripts, -- the fruits of a life of accumulation, and the basis of those valuable
publications with which he has at different times illustrated the Spanish
colonial history.

From these three magnificent collections, the result of half a century's careful
researches, I have obtained a mass of unpublished documents, relating to the
Conquest and Settlement of Mexico and of Peru, comprising altogether about
eight thousand folio pages. They consist of instructions of the Court, military
and private journals, correspondence of the great actors in the scenes, legal
instruments, contemporary chronicles, and the like, drawn from all the principal
places in the extensive colonial empire of Spain, as well as from the public
archives in the Peninsula.

I have still further fortified the collection by gleaning such materials from
Mexico itself as had been overlooked by my illustrious predecessors in these

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