Miguel Cavello Balboa was a soldier who took orders late in life and went out to Peru in 1566. He settled at Quito and devoted himself to the preparation of his work entitled 'Miscellanea Austral.' He is the only authority who gives any tradition respecting the origin of the coast people; and he supplies an excellent narrative of the war between Huascar and Atahualpa, including the love episode of Quilacu.[1]
The history of the Incas by Friar Martin de Morua is still in manuscript. Morua had studied the Quichua language. His work, finished in 1590, is full of valuable information. A copy of the manuscript was obtained by Dr. Gonzalez de la Rosa from the Loyola archives in 1909.
Some of the Jesuits were engaged in the work of extirpating idolatry. Their reports throw light on the legends and superstitions of the people on and near the coast. These are contained in the very rare work of Arriaga (1621), and in the report of Avila on the legends and myths of Huarochiri. The work of another Jesuit named Luis de Teruel, who wrote an account of his labours for the extirpation of idolatry, is lost, as well as that of Hernando Avendaño, some of whose sermons in Quichua have been preserved. Fray Alonzo Ramos Gavilan, in his 'History of the Church of Copacabana' (1620), throws light on the movements of the mitimaes or colonists in the Collao, and gives some new details respecting the consecrated virgins, the sacrifices,
- ↑ The original Spanish text of Balboa is unknown. We only have a French translation, by Ternaux Compans, published in 1840.
