Besides what has been said touching the name of Peru by Pedro de Cieza, José de Acosta, and Gomara, I shall now offer the authority of another distinguished author, a priest of the holy Society of Jesus, named Father Bias Valera, who wrote a history of that empire in most elegant Latin, and who was able to have written it in many languages, for he had the gift of learning them. But it was the misfortune of my native country, which perhaps did not deserve to be written of in such a manner, that his papers were lost in the ruin and pillage of Cadiz by the English in 1596. He himself died soon afterwards. I received the fragments of papers which were rescued from the pillage, and they caused me regret and sorrow at the loss of those which were destroyed. More than half were lost. I was presented with these papers by the Father Maldonado de Saavedra, a native of Seville, of the same Company, who in the present year 1600 reads the Scripture in the city of Cordova.

The Father Valera, touching the derivation of the word Peru, says, in his elegant Latin, what follows, which I, an Indian, have translated into my unpolished romance.

“The kingdom of Peru is famous, illustrious, extensive, and contains so great a quantity of gold, silver, and other rich metals, that the abundance of them gave rise to the saying ‘he possesses Peru,’ instead of ‘the man is rich.’ The name was recently given to this empire of the Yncas by the Spaniards.