as a very thorough historian of Yucatan, the farthest east, while Villagutierre, Remesal, and Burgoa complete the circle in the south, for Itza, Chiapas, and Oajaca, respectively. Remesal represents also the Dominican order, which in Chiapas held sway, and other orders have their special historians, such as Grijalva, the Augustinian chronicler; Garcia, who records Bethlehemite deeds; Philoponus, the Benedictine; Alegre and Florencia, the Jesuit annalists, and so forth; while the church itself found historians in Fernandez, Gonzalez Dávila, and Hazart.
In connection with the monks figures a new class of writers, natives and mestizos, who were educated at the convents or became members of orders, and imbibed from teachers the love of writing. Repelled to a certain extent by the proud Spaniard, they cling more closely to their own race, and, while seeking in its glorious records a balm for their sorrow, they feel a yearning to preserve them and to advocate the claims of their people. Among these writers I have already spoken of Camargo, who in connection with material on aboriginal history and customs gives a brief sketch of events during Spanish rule. There is also Chimalpain, who besides his translation of Gomara, to which he adds several valuable features, is credited with works on ancient and conquest times. Ixtlilxochitl, the native Cicero, writes more fully on the coming of the Spaniards, with which the achievements of his own family, the main topic of his works, are so closely bound up, and he frequently ventures to throw light on incidents wherein the conquerors appear to little advantage. His son Manuel Alva issued several translations of Vega's comedies together with platicas against native superstitions. The native Jesuit Juan Tovar wrote on ancient history, but the works of the mestizo friar Duran, so largely used by Acosta, have been wrongly credited to Tovar by hasty modern historians. Antonio Tovar, Cano Montezuma, Franciseo Pimentel Ixtlilxochitl, the mestizo Cristóbal Castillo, Saavedra Guzman, the author of El Peregrino Indiano, 1599, Pedro Gutierrez de Santa Clara, Pedro Ponce, Tezozomoc, Juan Bautista Pomar, Tadeo de Niza, Gabriel de Ayala in his Comentarios, Cristóbal Castañeda, who wrote on Michoacan, and Jaun Ventura Zapata y Mendoza, the Tlascaltec annalist, are among the noted writers of native or mixed origin, whose productions on ancient and conquest periods have either been published or incorporated in the works of Torquemada, Vetancurt, Clavigero, and others.
Torquemada, as I have shown, must be regarded as the leading chronicler of New Spain for the sixteenth century, giving as he does a comprehensive account of political as well as ecclesiastical and aboriginal affairs, compiled for the first half of the century from a number of versions extant in manuscript and print, and the remainder written toa great extent from personal observations. For this work he was particularly well fitted by his training, attainments, and position. Born in Spain, he came at an early age to Mexico, where he assumed. the Franciscan robe and studied philosophy and theology under the famous Juan Bautista, whose love for the Mexican language, history, and antiquities he readily imbibed. His ability was early recognized, and he became definidor, guardian of Tlatelulco college and of Tlascala convent, and provincial of his order in Mexico, holding the latter office from 1614 to 1617. To this position, or to the influence which gained it, may be due