During these last years his efforts were directed chiefly to giving to the world a complete and corrected edition of his _Historia general y natural de las Indias_. The printing was begun, but before it was finished the author succumbed to an acute fever at the age of seventy-nine. The undertaking was interrupted, and it was only after nearly three hundred years that the complete work appeared in print. The whole work was originally divided into three parts comprising fifty books. The first part published during his lifetime consisted of nineteen or nineteen and a half books. In 1557 the twentieth book was printed separately in Valladolid, but the rest of it remained in manuscript until the publication of the complete edition issued by the Academy of History in the middle of the nineteenth century. Oviedo wrote as the authorized chronicler of the Indies, and in this capacity he had access to official documents. His other works deal chiefly with the affairs of the Peninsula. Harrisse reports the existence of two collections of Oviedo’s letters and diaries, and suggests the desirability of their publication. In referring to this principal work of Oviedo Las Casas manifests his ruling passion in affirming that Oviedo should have written at the top of his history: “This book was written by a conqueror, robber, and murderer of the Indians, whole populations of whom he consigned to the mines, where they perished.”[12] [Sidenote: Topics of the _Sumario_] The first chapter of the _Sumario_ presents a description of the navigation between Seville and America. A number of the following chapters are devoted to the Indians of the islands and Tierra Firme, and these are followed by a series of chapters enumerating and describing the animals, birds, reptiles, trees, and other living things, succeeded by an account of mines and pearl-fishing. Of this latter business Oviedo gives a brief account: [Sidenote: Oviedo on pearl fishing]