During his residence at Seville, which, with some interruptions, extended from 1588 to 1598, or perhaps somewhat longer, Cervantes made an ineffectual application to the king for an appointment in America; setting forth by exact documents--which now constitute the most valuable materials for his biography--a general account of his adventures, services, and sufferings while a soldier in the Levant, and of the miseries of his life while he was a slave in Algiers.[124] This was in 1590. But no other than a formal answer seems ever to have been returned to the application; and the whole affair only leaves us to infer the severity of that distress which should induce him to seek relief in exile to a colony of which he has elsewhere spoken as the great resort of rogues.[125] [124] This extraordinary mass of documents is preserved in the Archivos de las Indias, which are admirably arranged in the old and beautiful Exchange built by Herrera in Seville, when Seville was the great _entrepôt_ between Spain and her colonies. The papers referred to may be found in Estante II. Cajon 5, Legajo 1, and were discovered by the venerable Cean Bermudez in 1808. The most important of them are published entire, and the rest are well abridged, in the Life of Cervantes by Navarrete (pp. 311-388). Cervantes petitioned in them for one of four offices:--the Auditorship of New Granada; that of the galleys of Carthagena; the Governorship of the Province of Soconusco; or the place of Corregidor of the city of Paz. [125] “Viéndose pues tan falto de dineros y aun no con muchos amigos, se acogió al remedio á que otros muchos perdidos en aquella ciudad [Sevilla] se acogen; que es, el pasarse á las Indias, refugio y amparo de los desesperados de España, iglesia de los alzados, salvo conducto de los homicidas, pala y cubierta de los jugadores, añagaza general de mugeres libres, engaño comun de muchos y remedio particular de pocos.” El Zeloso Estremeño, Novelas, Tom. II. p. 1.