The document from which the following translation has been made is amongst the original and inedited manuscripts in the National Library at Madrid (Papeles MSS. originales y ineditos, G. 127). The manuscript consists of a life of Don Alonzo Enriquez de Guzman, a native of Seville, of good family, written by himself, and interspersed with numerous letters, comprising a period between 1518 and 1543, from his nineteenth to his forty-fourth year. His very curious and interesting narrative includes his adventures in Spain, Sicily, Italy, Germany, Flanders, the Balearic Isles, and Peru; and it is one of the very few works in which the feuds of the Pizarros and Almagro are described by an eye-witness. Moreover, with the exception of Pedro Pizarro, and possibly Cieza de Leon, Don Alonzo is the earliest traveller in Peru whose writings have come down to us. For this reason the manuscript appeared to me to be worth translating, and thus taking its place in the series of the Hakluyt Society's works; more especially as it had escaped the notice of Mr. Prescott, and others who have written on the discovery and conquest of Peru.

I am indebted for a knowledge of this curious manuscript to my friend Don Benjamin Vicuña Mackenna, an eminent Chilian writer and politician, whose works have in no small degree increased the literary reputation of the vigorous and robust little republic, which nestles at the feet of the mighty cordillera of the southern Andes.