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An English Library at Trinidad, 1633

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Eleanor B. Adams*
Affiliation:
University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico

Extract

The island of Trinidad was discovered by Columbus on the third voyage in 1498. One of the largest and most fertile of the West Indian islands, for many years it remained on the fringe of European activity in the Caribbean area and on the coasts of Venezuela and Guiana. A Spanish settlement was founded there in 1532, but apparently it disintegrated within a short time. Toward the end of the sixteenth century Berrio and Raleigh fought for possession of the island, but chiefly as a convenient base for their rival search for El Dorado, or Manoa, the Golden Man and the mythical city of gold. Throughout the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries explorers, corsairs, and contraband traders, Spanish, French, English, and Dutch, passed near its shores, and many of them may well have paused there to refresh themselves and to make necessary repairs to their vessels. But the records are scanty and we know little of such events or of the settlements that existed from time to time.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1955

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References

1 Archivo General de Indias, Sevilla, Contaduría, leg. 720; Petition of General don Juan de Eulate to the Council of the Indies, February 10, 1640, Indiferente General, leg. 761. See also Newton, A. P., The colonizing activities of the English Puritans (New Haven and London, 1914), p. 189 Google Scholar; The European nations in the West Indies, 1493–1688 (London, 1933), p. 165.Google Scholar

2 AGI, Audiencia de Santo Domingo, leg. 180.

3 For detailed accounts of Eulate’s stormy career in New Mexico, see Scholes, F. V., Church and State in New Mexico, 1610–1650 (Albuquerque, 1937)Google Scholar, Chap. 3; Adams, E. B. and Longhurst, J. E., “New Mexico and the Sack of Rome: one hundred years later,” New Mexico Historical Review, vol. 28 (1953), pp. 243250.Google Scholar

4 Translations from a document published by Medina, J. T. in Historia del Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición de Cartagena de las Indias (Santiago de Chile, 1899), pp. 434436.Google Scholar

5 The numbers in parenthesis refer to the books listed by the same numbers in the Appendix.

6 Lope de Vega devotes over twenty lines to these two “ingenios singulares,” calling upon the ancient Greeks and Latins to make a pilgrimage to their temple.

7 Schäfer, E., Las rúbricas del Consejo real y supremo de las Indias (Sevilla, 1934).Google Scholar

8 The French form “histoire” is used, but Spanish copyists were often careless, so this is not conclusive.

9 The Cambridge History of English Literature, IV (New York and Cambridge, 1939)Google Scholar, Chap. 1.

10 Lanson, G., Manuel bibliographique de la littérature française moderne (Paris, 1925)Google Scholar, gives the following list: Thucydide, Herodote, Xenophon, Denys d’Halycarnasse, Polybe, Appian Alexandrin, Dion Cassie, Tacite, Herodian, Josephe, Plutarque, Tite Live, Saluste, Jule Cesar, Quint Curse, Egesippe, Ammian Marcellin, Procope, Saxon Grammairien, Witichinde, Histoire de Henri IIII empereur, Enée Silvye, Antoine Bonfinie, Jean Aventin, Albert Krantz, Martin Crommere, Leonard Aretin, Pogge Florentin, Macchiavel, Augustin Iustinian, M.-Ant. Sabellique, Bembe, Bernardin Corie, Benoist Ascolti, Paul Jove, Jerosme Faletti, Ascaigne Centorie, Martin Barlet, Jaques Fontaines, Pierre d’Oudegherst, Ant. Nebrisse, Callimach experient, Paul Emile, Martin et Guill. du Bellay, Harangues militaires de nostre temps.

11 Arber, A., Herbals, their origin and evolution, a chapter in the history of botany, 1470–1670 (Cambridge, 1938).Google Scholar

12 Newton, , Colonizing activities of the English Puritans, pp. 2528.Google Scholar