Beside these, the actual eyewitnesses of events, are to be put the general historians of the Indies. The first who published his work complete was Francisco Lopez de Gómara. He was born in 1510, too late to share in the conquest, and was, in fact, a man of letters, who travelled, indeed, but only in Italy. The accident that he was secretary to Cortés when he had returned for the last time to Spain probably directed Gómara’s studies. He was accused of knowing nothing of many parts of his subject except what Cortés had told him, and of having distorted truth in the interest of his patron. But Gómara wrote well, and the immense contemporary interest in the subject gave his _History of the Indies_ and his _Chronicle of New Spain_, which is a panegyric of Cortés, a great vogue. They first appeared in 1552, 1553, and 1554. An older man, and a much greater authority, was Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes (1478-1557), whose _General and Natural History of the Indies_ was partly published in 1535, before Gómara’s. But the author kept his work in hand till his death, and appears to have made corrections and additions to the last.[49] Oviedo was in the West Indies in official posts for forty years, beginning in 1513, and was therefore a contemporary of, though not a partaker in, the great conquests. He is a garrulous writer of no great force of mind, much more a chronicler than a historian. [SN: _Gómara, Oviedo, Las Casas, Herrera, the Inca Garcilaso._] There are two general historians of the Indies of very different value from Oviedo. The first is the Bishop of Chiapa, the justly famous Bartolomé de las Casas (1474?-1566), who supplied the critics of his countrymen (most of whom afterwards showed that they wanted only the opportunity in order to equal the crimes) with weapons by his famous _Very Brief Account of the Ruin of the Indies_. This, first printed in 1542, was reprinted with other tracts written for the honourable purpose of defending the unfortunate Indians from oppression in 1552, and was made known to all Europe in translations. The general _History of the Indies_, which he wrote during his old age, remained unprinted till it was included in the _Collection of inedited Documents for the History of Spain_ published by the Spanish Government.[50] Las Casas was a man of a stamp not unfamiliar to ourselves. His hatred of cruelty was equally vehement and sincere. In his perfectly genuine horror for the excesses of his countrymen, which are not to be denied, he sometimes exaggerated and was sometimes unjust. He was perhaps inevitably emotional in his style, yet the fact that he had principle and passion and a cause to plead, gives his book a marked superiority over the mainly chronicle work of Gómara and Oviedo. Antonio de Herrera (1549-1625) was a very different man, an official historian--he was historiographer of the Indies--who served the king as literary advocate, and was supplied with good information.