THE NEW WORLD.*

THE reading public has to thank Mr. Francis Augustus MacNutt for making accessible to them a book of won- derful interest and fascination. He has translated into modern English the "De Orbe Novo" of Peter Martyr. The only other translation into English was made in 1577. This was republished in 1885 as a part of a much larger work, " The First Three English Books on America," by Edward Arber. Peter Martyr d'Anghera was an Italian of great family, who was born in 1457. He was named after the canonized Dominican of Verona, who was murdered in 1252 by the Waldenses. His family name fell into disuse and Martyr took its place. Very little is known of his early life. He spent some time at the Ducal Court of Milan, and went from there to Rome, where he lived among the men of the new learning. Hither on an embassy from Spain came Inigo Lopez de Mendoza, Count of Tendilla. The ambassador became acquainted with Peter Martyr, and a strong friend- ship arose between the two men. On his return to Spain Tendilla took Peter Martyr with him and introduced him at the Spanish Court. Here he was offered the post of tutor to the young nobles and princes about the Court. He refused the offer, declaring that he wished to join the crusade against the infidels in Andalusia. During the siege of Baza he seems to have acted as something like a war correspondent. He busied himself with writing accounts of the siege, seems to have been but seldom at the front, and owns himself not at home among fighting men. Later on he took minor orders, and occupied a stall in the Cathedral of Granada. His ecclesiastical position frankly bored him. The position of Court tutor was once more offered to him, and this time it was accepted. The favourite of Ferdinand and Isabella, and no less in later years the favourite of their grandson, Charles V., he followed the Court from city to city, and his house became the rendezvous of the young gallants of the day. The thought of the New World possessed the minds of men. The romance of discovery illuminated Spanish life. To the house of Peter Martyr came "statesmen, noblemen, foreign envoys, great ecclesiastics, and papal legates," together with "navigators and conquerors, cosmo- graphers, colonial officials, and returning explorers from antipodal regions " ; even " common sailors and camp followers poured their tales into his ears." Among such a crowd as this he collected the mass of first-hand information which he set down in the form of letters, and which became an inex- haustible source of information for the later historians of Spanish America.

Peter Martyr was a born reporter ; he knew exactly what men wanted to hear ; he knew the value of detail ; above all, be was carried away by the charm of his subject. "Be not vexed, most Holy Father," he says, in one of his letters addressed to the Pope, "if from time to time in the course of my narrative I repeat certain particulars or allow myself digressions. I feel myself carried away by a sort of joyous mental excitement." The historian infects his readers with a like sensation. As one reads of the passion of curiosity

• As Orbs Novo: the Eight Decades of Peter Martyr d'Anghera. Translated by F. A. MacNutt. 2 vols. London: 0. P. Putnam's Sons. [50s. net.] caused in the Spanish capital not only by the return of each hero of travel, but by each withered flower, strange fruit, live

parrot, or dead animal brought back from the new land of romance, one can but exclaim, "How modern the world always was !" For instance, Peter Martyr seems to make us present at an extraordinary entertainment given on the terrace of his house by an Aztec slave who came home with Juan Ribera from Muteczuma's capital. (The name of the Aztec emperor is thus spelt in the book before us.) "He dressed in my room," says the historian, who knows so well how to lend actuality to a story. First be describes the clothes, woven feathers, sandals, &a., in which he walked up and down before the assembled audience.

"He then gave an exhibition of a battle; first hurling himself upon his enemies, then retreating ; then he engaged another slave who served with him and was trained to these exercises. He seized him by the hair, as they do their enemies whom they capture with weapons in their hands, dragging them off to be sacrificed. After throwing the slave on the ground, he feigned to cut open his breast above the heart with a knife. After tearing out the heart, he wrung from his hands the blood flowing from the wound, and then besprinkled the sword and shield. This is the treatment they show prisoners."

Peter Martyr's party on the terrace must have been a success ! He enumerates the great men who watched the

performance with him : the papal legate, the Venetian ambassador, the envoy of the Duke of Milan, all " desiring to learn and behold something new." Into the ears of these news-lovers Peter Martyr had doubtless poured the even now almost incredible story of the cities of Mexico, with their fearful civilization based upon human sacrifice. With Cortes and his men they must have seemed to be marching along the causeway which led to the splendid city whose aqueducts were more perfect than those of Spain, and whose fair towers, reflected in the surrounding water, were the scenes of a butchery which made even Cortes's soldiers shiver. "Human sacrifices are celebrated each year according to the means of each family, just as among us poor people burn a small dip to the Divinity, while the wealthy light a large candle." Corks declares, he goes on, "that he has never seen a royal palace or a princely establishment in Spain that was not inferior to the seventy palaces in this town. These buildings are constructed of stone and marble and are decorated with every architectural device." Gardens, fish- ponds, and aviaries amazed the discoverers. The interior of Muteczuma's palace took Cortes aback. The Aztec artists, he declares, " reproduce whatever they see." He believes that " there does not exist a single bird, or figure, or form of quad- ruped of which Muteczuma does not possess a reproduction so real and lifelike that at a little distance it seems alive." Cortes made Muteczuma show him all the sights of his amazing city. Together they went over the temples and the fortifications, and the unwilling host spared him no detail of splendour or ferocity. The Red Indian Emperor himself was a strange outcome of his surroundings, so far as Peter Martyr could depict him. Highly sophisticated, shrewd, and shrinking, he belittled himself and his kingdom in talking to the Spaniard, and scoffed at the men who thought him im- mortal. On the other hand, he reproached Corks for allowing his men to look him in the face, he himself being always served and addressed with averted eyes. Corks snubbed the criticism with the rough manliness of the European.

It is obvious that our author put everything down exactly as he beard it. He speaks of his own efforts of memory, and contemporary writers—so his editor tells ns—marvel at the speed of his composition. Messengers, booted and spurred,

waited to carry the reports of his interviews to foreign Courts. He was the journalist of his day, with no need to

invent news. News such as has never been heard of since, and never can be again, was brought to his study. His hearers were hungry for details—for the small things which made great adventures and incredible discoveries seem reaL If we take at random a short section of his narrative, we may give our readers a notion of the fascination of his style. Columbus is sailing round the coast of Hispaniola, landing occasionally, and occasionally inviting the various chiefs to visit him on his ship. The visit of one of these is thus described

" As soon as he came on board, and after saluting the Spaniards and distributing some gold among the officers, he turned to the women whom we had rescued from the cannibals, and glancing with half-opened eyes at one of them whom we called Catherine, he spoke to her very softly. After which, with the Admiral's per- mission, which he asked with great politeness and urbanity, be inspected the horses and other things he bad never before seen."

The result of this momentary look and whisper was that all the women threw themselves into the sea next night and tried—some succeeding—to swim three miles to the shore. They were pursued in light boats and three were recaptured.

No other instance is mentioned of women endeavouring to return to their own people. As a rule, they played the part of faithful traitors. " Marina," the Aztec woman who followed Cortes on his campaigns, never once played him false, though she delivered her friends, his enemies, into his hands without apparent remorse.

Peter Martyr displays very often a sly sense of humour, more especially when he describes the difficulties in which the explorers found themselves when they strove to recommend the Christian religion to the heathen. Gonzales implored Nicoragua to abandon human sacrifice, assuring him that by shedding blood he could not " please the Universal Creator." Nothing, he continued, "more excites His ire than the destruction of men." Carried away by his zeal, and with that amazing indifference to the contradiction of ideal and action which throughout the conquest of the New World appears to have characterized the Spaniards, he preached that self- defence alone was permissible to Christians. "If you are attacked while living your peaceful existence, it is permissible to everyone to resist injustice," but "it is forbidden to offend others by ambition and avarice." The listeners hung open- mouthed on these words. " They made a grimace, however, at what was said about war," and their instructor "did not ven- ture to reopen this subject," turning their attention to the mystery of the Cross.

The extraordinary cruelties of the earliest colonists and the miserable condition of the natives over whom they tyran- nized are discussed in these pages almost as we might discuss them to-day. The simultaneous suicide of a large gang of men who were working a mine caused a sensation at the Spanish Court, and Peter Martyr describes a serious discussion as to whether the natives would be better treated as slaves or as assigned labourers. Labourers assigned for a few years usually died before their time was up, it being worth their masters' while to work them to death. Many people argued that they would get better treatment as objects of actual property. Peter Martyr repeats with deep indignation that some colonists,"not to lose practice in the shedding of blood and to exercise the strength of their arms," diabolically "invented a game in which they amused themselves in cutting off the heads of innocent victims with one sole blow." The natives who looked on must have reflected that there were more ways than one of sacrificing human life.

Peter Martyr, considering the time be lived in, was wonder- fully little credulous. In his day, naturally incredulous people must have been continually proved to be in the wrong. The mar- vellous was perpetually happening. He admits that he does not pin his faith to all that he chronicles. The waters of perpetual youth which he hears of in Florida fire the imagination of an old man, but hardly impress his reason. The land of the Amazons, described by native after native as somewhere beyond the borders of the territories known to them, strikes him as attested by so great a consensus of tradition that it is diffi- cult to regard it as merely fabulous. The crosses found in Mexico stirred his imagination, as they stir ours. To-day it is the fashion to " explain away," and they are supposed by many authorities to have been erected to the four winds of heaven. On the other hand, they may witness, like "the skeleton in armour," to some remote and passing European influence. Here is what Peter Martyr says : " Crosses have been seen amongst them, and when they were asked, through interpreters, the meaning of that emblem, some of them answered that a very beautiful man had once lived amongst

them who had left them this symbol as a remembrance of him; others said that a man more radiant than the sun had' died upon that cross." If this story is true, the more romantic is surely for once the more likely explanation of the facts. On the whole, our historian is cautious. The

awful cupidity of the conquerors may lead them, he thinks, to exaggerate the money to be made in the New World. He doubts if Cortes brought home the huge treasure from Mexico with which he is credited. He quotes what he

describes as "a vulgar proverb" to sum up his experience of life. Certainly it contains a startling amount of truth: " There is lees of money, faith, and sense than is commonly reported."