folio, illuminated coat of arms on vellum, followed by 212 pages of manuscript, full contemporary vellum. There is worming running through the upper portion of many leaves, which does affect text, else in good, legible condition. The volume bears a typed, tipped in slip, dated Lima, 1905, presenting the volume to a R. J. Van Deusen. Van Deusen was a U. S. Government official who worked in Puerto Rico in the years after the Spanish American War, and was also a book collector who collected materials on Hispanic America.

Manuscript history produced in 1716 which details the history of the family of Francisco de Orellana (1500-1549) in America. The present volume was undoubtedly used in support of land claims by the family.

Francisco de Orellana accompanied Gonzalo Pizarro, brother of Francisco, on an extremely arduous expedition from Quito across the eastern cordillera of the Andes then through the vast jungles on the other side, in 1542. The expedition was hoping to find the source of recently discovered cinnamon trees as well as to look for the rumored kingdom of El Dorado said to be nearby. The party consisted of some 340 Spaniards, 4 thousand Indios, 150 horses, dogs, llamas and hundreds of pigs, which were driven along as a source of food. The expedition after trudging for some months through the jungle arrived in a starving condition on the Napo river. Here they constructed a forge, felled trees, made nails from horsehoes, and constructed a brigantine, in order to explore the river in search of villages and food. Francisco de Orellana and fifty seven others were chosen to head downriver in search of sustenance as well as any intelligence respecting the location of the "kingdom of gold." Orellana and his companions were unable to return against the stream and followed the entire length of the Amazon to its mouth. While traveling Orellana's party engaged in combat with a group of Indian warriors, who were aided by formidable women warriors. Orellana finally reached the mouth of the river, formerly called the Maranhao, by the Portugese, in August 1542, after a series of adventures with both hostile and friendly Indios, and from that time on it would be known as Rio de las Amazonas, or Amazon River. At roughly the same time Pizarro and the few ragged survivors straggled back into Quito.

Several months later Orellana traveled to Spain to inform Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and king of Spain, of his discoveries, and to defend himself against the accusation of treachery with the evidence of the invaluable documents he carried with him. He met with a chilly reception, particularly because the river he had traveled entered the sea in Portugese territory, and international complications were feared. Eventually the Council of the Indies decided that upstream of the river mouth the Amazon was still free territory. According to Orellana's reports the territory was quite rich. Orellana was named governor of what was meant to become the Spanish province of Nueva Andalusia and assigned the task of conquering and colonizing the new land.

He set out in May 1545 with four ships, many hundreds of colonists, and the wife he had married back in Spain. The voyage was a disaster one ship was lost in mid-Atlantic, the other three actually sailed up the mouth of the Amazon but were wrecked among the river islands. Orellana vanished lost in some recess of the river; he had been the first to travel its length and the first to name it.                                

          Parry, J. H., The Age of Reconnaissance, p. 174-175

          See Carvajal, Gaspar de, Descubrimiento del Rio de las Amazonas

          Oviedo, Gonzalo Fernando de, Historia general y natural de las Indias (1535), ed. Medina, Jose Toribio, 1894