But the East, as well as the West, was now opened to Spanish adventure. The conquest of Portugal had brought the Oriental dependencies of that kingdom under the authority of the Spanish crown; and as the Count de Lemos, the great patron of letters in his time, and President of the Council of the Indies, chanced to have his attention particularly drawn in that direction, he commanded the younger of the Argensolas to write an account of the Moluccas. The poet obeyed, and published his work in 1609, dedicating it to Philip the Third. It is one of the most pleasing of the minor Spanish histories; full of the traditions found among the natives by the Portuguese, when they first landed, and of the wild adventures that followed when they had taken possession of the islands. Parts of it are, indeed, inconsistent with the nature of the civilization they found there, such as formal and eloquent harangues attributed to the natives; while other parts, like some of its love-stories, are romantic enough to be suspected of invention, even if they are true. But, in general, the work is written in an agreeable poetical style, such as is not unbefitting an account of the mysterious isles
“Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants brought Their spicy drugs,”--
striving, for a long time, to hide from the competition of other nations the history and resources of the oppressed race whom they compelled to minister to their love of gain.[214]
[214] “Conquista de las Islas Molucas,” Madrid, 1609, folio. Pellicer, Bib. de Trad., Tom. I. p. 87. The love-story of Durante, an ensign, in the third book of the “Conquista,” is good and probable; and the account of the Patagonian giants, in the same book, turns out to be almost true, like some of the long-discredited stories of Marco Polo and Mendez Pinto.
Quite as uncertain in authority and less elegant in style are the histories of Garcilasso de la Vega,--a gentle and trusting spirit rather than a wise one; proud of being a captain in the service of the king of Spain, and allied, as a son of one of the unscrupulous conquerors of Peru, to the great house of Infantado; but always betraying the weaker nature of his mother, who was of the blood royal of the Incas, and never entirely forgetting the glories of his Indian race, or the cruel injuries they had suffered at the hands of Spain. He was born at “Cuzco, in Peru, the seat of Atabalipa,” in 1540, and was educated there, amidst the tumults of the conquest; but, when he was twenty years old, he was sent to Spain, where, under difficult and trying circumstances, he maintained an honorable reputation during a life protracted to the age of seventy-six.