TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

Summary

Girolamo Benzoni was born at Milan about the year 1519, and, as we learn from himself, started out upon adventure in the New World at the age of twenty-two. After fourteen years of toil and travail in those parts, he returned home; and in 1565 published his “Historia del Mondo Nuovo” at Venice, dedicating it to Pope Pius IV. This was a quarto volume; but the book was reprinted seven years afterwards in a small octavo form, and this is the one used in the following translation. It must have had what is styled a “fair run,” since it passed through several editions, and was translated into Latin, French, German, and Flemish,—besides the free use which was made of it by the De Brys, and others. But Jansen was wrong in stating that it was also rendered into English; for Purchas (vol. iv, page 1448, edition 1625), instead of a translation of the book, gives little more than six pages, which (as Chapter xii) he entitles—“Briefe extracts translated out of Jerom Benzos.”

The Spaniards of those days do not seem to have patronized the book very warmly, nor do they appear to have rendered it into their language, although it bears so much and so accurately on their proceedings. Yet it has been noticed by them: in the epitome of Leon Pinelo's Bibliotheca, after the various editions of Geronimo Bençono are enumerated, it is added somewhat pithily—“Autor poco afecto à los Españoles.”