and then by disproportionate details on some topic for which they happened to obtain special information, or with predilection for certain regions or subjects. In the latter respect the monk chroniclers excel; and intent as they are on their favorite theme, they sprinkle but scantily political and general information in a mass of theological verbiage, in extenuated accounts of mission labors in obscure districts, and in reciting the negative virtues of humble ascetics. Add to the want of historic method, the lack of judgment in selecting interesting matter, and in distinguishing truth from absurdity, the bias given by credulity and bigotry, the involved style, and other defects, and the confusion is complete. Not that I ever expected to find the subject much better presented; had it been so, my efforts were of less importance. I was, and am, fully aware of the necessity to go to the fountain-head for information, if I would rescue much valuable material cast aside by the unreflecting mind and which serves in its less tangible points at least to promote the philosophic treatment of the rest. The original sources lie not alone in the many collections of letters and reports from the political and ecclesiastical officials indicated in the preface to Hist. Mex., i., this series, and throughout the footnotes, but they are to be found in the many annals of special districts and corporations, based on documents from obscure convents and local offices, especially for periods beyond the reach of the writer's own observations. The value of such annals is increased by the disappearance of the sources before the inroads of time, the ravages of factions, and such orders from the superior government as instanced in Zamada, Bib. Leg. Ult., iii. 509, wherein a remission to Spain is demanded of books and documents which may serve for a general history of the Indies. Among the special works must be mentioned the diaries of private individuals, which connected extend over a long period, and allude, though often very briefly, to almost every incident of note throughout the country. Latterly periodicals begin to appear, and while subjected to a most depressing censorship, they fail not to add both facts and clues for the investigator. Many of these special treatises, annals, and diaries are so rare as not to have reached the hands of modern national writers on New Spain history, or they have only quite recently been brought to light; others, and especially official reports from viceroys, governors, judges, prelates, and corporations, exist only in manuscript form, many of them unique.
In the collection of such rare and valuable material I have been exceedingly fortunate, partly through the active aid of friends and agents, and the researches of esteemed predecessors in certain portions of my fields, as Prescott, Squier, Stephens; but also by constant personal search and effort for a period of 30 years. While possessing these advantages over the few Hispano-American writers who have in a more or less complete manner sought to cover the colonial period, I am not unmindful of their meritorious efforts, and acknowledge also the aid afforded me by their different views, now in favor of Spain, now for Mexico; upholding the cause of some party or order, or bringing into prominence some special topic. For the historian must not alone sift facts, but look upon them from all sides and with many eyes, in order to arrive at a true statement.
The leading general chronicler for the sixteenth century was Torquemada, and the same position must be assigned for the seventeenth to Augustin de