But Marmolejo’s fears of the critics were not realized. They have found his narrative animated, without the digressions that appealed to the taste of his time, free from tiresome repetitions and never departing from the course of events to picture imaginary customs of the Indians. In spite of distance and time he makes one turn back and live with a remote generation, causing one to experience the impressions the scenes narrated must have made on the eye-witness. His style partakes somewhat of the rudeness of the primitive conquistadores, but is always fresh and spontaneous.[50] Among the motives that induced Marmolejo to write, according to his own statement, were his sense of the large number of happenings in Chile that should be recorded and that the only written account of them was found in Ercilla’s _Araucana_, “not so full as would be necessary in order to treat properly of all of the affairs of the kingdom.”[51] [Sidenote: Barros Arana on Marmolejo] Without denying the directness and vividness of Marmolejo’s narrative Barros Arana points out the technical defects of the composition, the absence of literary art in the presentation of facts, and the lack of due emphasis on the most notable incidents. Marmolejo wrote almost exclusively of events of which he had personal knowledge, whence his chronicle is confined almost entirely to military affairs. He gave little information of any other class of events and left his chronology defective. Writing a personal narrative, he was not careful to fix adequately his dates, thus obliging future historians to have recourse to other sources of knowledge, if they would make a complete history of the period covered by the author’s experience.[52] [Illustration: Jerónimo de Alderete] [Sidenote: _Historiadores de Chile_] Marmolejo’s narrative, in printed form, occupies two hundred and twelve pages of the _Colección de historiadores de Chile_, and deals with the events of Chilean history during the forty years prior to 1575. No single extract is likely to reveal much of the author’s quality, particularly when the paragraph quoted is translated into a language as far removed as English is from the original Spanish; yet some features of the author’s simple and familiar manner may be discovered even in a translation. The following paragraph on Alderete’s appointment as Valdivia’s successor may serve as an illustration: [Sidenote: Marmolejo on Alderete]