Pedro de Cieza de Leon, Parte primera de la chronica del Peru. Seville, 1553.
Pedro de Cieza de Leon (c.1518-1554) went to South America as a common soldier in 1534, and spent years traveling the territories of modern Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. His “chronicle of Peru” has four parts; only the first, an ethnographic description of the land, was published in his lifetime. The richest and most sympathetic account of Andean culture and geography at the time of the Conquest, it is an invaluable source for scholars. Its woodcuts, although striking, were made by an artist with no first-hand knowledge of Peru, and are sometimes misleading; the drawing of Lake Titicaca looks a bit like a Venetian canal.