With the trio of travellers and observers, Benzoni, Acosta, and Thevet, may be classed Juan de Castellanos, whose _Elegías de Varones Ilustres de Indias_ recount not only the glories of the military, ecclesiastic, and civil conquerors who figured in the early annals of the region extending over the Antilles, the Isthmus, and the northern part of South America, but give special histories of the New Granada provinces. Himself one of the horde which came over from Spain for glory and plunder, he had as cavalry soldier taken active part in a number of the expeditions so graphically described. With the acquisition of a fortune came a sense of the injustice exercised in its accumulation, and remorse perhaps for ill-treatment of the Indians, mingled largely with discontent at the poor recognition of his services, caused him to join the church. He received the appointment of _canónigo tesorero_ at Cartagena, but resigned it after a brief tenure for the curacy of Tunja, erroneously assumed by some writers to be his birthplace. Here he found ample time to seek solace by unlocking the gates of a natural eloquence, and letting forth the remembrances of glorious deeds and events. The gown is forgotten, and the old soldier dons again in fancy the rusty armor, though he modestly, too modestly, refrains from intruding himself. It is in prose that he first relates his story, but finding this too quiet for his theme of heroes and battles, he transposes the whole into verse, a work of ten years. His is not the artificial refinement of the epic writer, whose form he follows from a love of rhythm, but merely versified narrative, with a generally honest adherence to fact, though form and metre suffer: Iré con pasos algo presurosos, Sin orla de poéticos cabellos Que hacen versos dulces, sonorosos A los ejercitados en leerlos; Pues como canto casos dolorosos, Cuales los padecieron muchos dellos, Parecióme decir la verdad pura Sin usar de ficcion ni compostura.