I have the pleasure to present to the Hakluyt Society, in the accompanying volume, the first two historians who wrote on the conquest of the Rio de la Plata, which took place in the reign of Charles V, King of Spain and Emperor of Germany.

The first of these was a German, a native of Straubing, in Bavaria, whose name was Ulrich Schmidt. The second was a Spaniard, native of Jerez de la Frontera in Andalusia, named Alvar Nuñez, better known by the surname which he took from his mother, Doña Teresa Cabeza de Vaca. This Alvar Nuñez was a grandson of Don Pedro Vera, who, in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholics, undertook to conquer the Canary Islands at his own cost. As his means, however, were insufficient for so great an enterprise, he borrowed money of a Moorish banker upon pledge. The security given by this inhuman father consisted of his two sons, the younger of whom was the father of Alvar Nuñez; and this transaction, characteristic of a soldier in those semi-barbarous times, seemed to presage the singular adventures in which the son of the latter was destined to take part.

Of the German's lineage nothing is known. I believe him to have been an obscure individual, servant or agent, like the modern commis voyageurs or commercial travellers, for one of the wealthy houses of commerce established at Seville in the time of the Emperor, and concerning which I shall have something to say by-and-by.