_La Argentina_ must be viewed in its two aspects, as poetry and history, and the passages illustrating these two phases are widely different in spirit, even when the unlike passages are both founded on a basis of facts. But in the poetic figures there are fewer references to the fancies of pagan literature and mythology than may be found in the other poems with which Centenera’s work may be compared. Now and then the writer’s lamentations, raised to heaven because of the want and misery of the company, reveal the ecclesiastic and suggest passages of the Psalms. Volved con piedad, Señor, la mano, Doleos de los tristes afligidos, Doleos de los niños inocentes, Que gritan con sus ojos hechos fuentes, Doleos de las tristes afligidas Que quedan sin abrigo y compañía: También de las doncellas doloridas Que pierden a sus padres y alegría.[92] [Sidenote: Topics of later cantos] [Sidenote: Spaniards’ views of their calamities] From battles with the Indians in the region of Río de la Plata, the founding of Buenos Aires by Juan de Garay, and the insurrection of the mestizos at Santa Fe, Centenera, in his later cantos, turned to happenings of his time on the western coast, to the exploits of Francis Drake, the earthquake of Arequipa, and the council at Lima called by Archbishop Mogrovejo. This change of subject appears to have been due to the writer’s removal from the south-eastern province to Peru. Drake had appeared about five years before this event, whence it may be presumed the very favourable opinion of him expressed in _La Argentina_ was that entertained by at least a part of contemporary Peruvian society. Centenera found “this English and noble cavalier, given to the art of the sea, a skilful pilot and sailor, a good soldier, astute, sagacious, discrete, courteous, well-bred, brave, magnanimous, and a good friend, but wanting in the greater and more necessary quality, _que es el amor a Jesucristo_.” Centenera, as an ecclesiastic, was obliged by the spirit of the Spanish Church in the sixteenth century to make this limitation on the character of a Protestant. It is noteworthy, however, that he was able to discover so much excellence in a subject of the “Babylonian woman”; still this is partially accounted for when it is recalled that the Spaniards in America regarded their calamities, whether brought about by an English corsair or an earthquake, as a divinely directed punishment for their shortcomings, and in this view the piratical agent of God might appear to stand nearer the throne of heaven than those who suffered the infliction. But they feared the invader not merely for his direct influence, but as well for the influence he might have in awakening the spirit of revolt among the Indians.