Eighty years after Ursúa’s expedition Padre Cristóbal de Acuña made the journey of the Amazon, and recorded the results of his observations and inquiries. Immediately before undertaking this voyage Padre Acuña was the rector of the Jesuits’ college at Cuenca. The occasion of this journey was offered by the appearance in Quito of the officers of the expedition organized by Governor Noronha, of Pará. The commander of the expedition was Pedro de Texeira, who arrived in Quito in 1638. He remained in that city eleven months, while the bulk of the personnel of the expedition continued in camp near Ávila. The viceroy finally offered the needed supplies, and ordered Texeira and his followers to go back to Pará by the way they came. He also ordered two Jesuits, on their way to Spain, to accompany the expedition as far as Pará. These were Cristóbal de Acuña and Andrés Artieda. _El nuevo descubrimiento del gran río de las Amazonas_ was written by Acuña under orders he had received to make careful observations, to set down the names of the Indian tribes, to give an account of their manners and customs, to note the rivers flowing into the Amazon, and to describe the natural products of the country bordering on the river. The information gathered he was required to report to the Council of the Indies, and it was contained in a volume published in Madrid in 1641. When this voyage was undertaken, Portugal was still united to Spain, but before the book was issued this connexion had been dissolved. Referring to this subject Sir Clements R. Markham, following the French translator, says, “The wretched government of Philip IV, terrified lest the Portuguese should take advantage of any information contained in Acuña’s book, and forgetting that Texeira and all his officers knew quite as much about the Amazons as the Spanish priest, ordered every copy of the work to be immediately and effectually destroyed. It has consequently become exceedingly scarce.”[117] [Sidenote: Service of Acuña] Acuña was born at Burgos in 1597. In 1612, at the age of fifteen, he entered the order of the Jesuits, and later was sent to America. Shortly after his arrival in South America he became rector of the Jesuits’ college at Cuenca de Quito. He was called from this position for the journey from Quito to Pará, which lasted about eleven months, from January 16, 1639, to December 12 following. While waiting at Pará for a ship to take him to Spain, he wrote his _Nuevo descubrimiento_, and after its publication in Madrid in 1641 we find him at Rome as provincial of the Jesuits. Later he returned to America, where he was appointed calificador, or censor, for the Inquisition. He was living in Lima in 1675, and died there in that year. [Sidenote: Earlier Amazon explorers] [Sidenote: Dwarfs and Amazons]