This is a new edition of the volume first published in 1891. Translated for the Hakluyt Society, and with notes and an introduction, by Luis L. Dominguez, this volume presents the accounts of 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. Schmidt published a narrative of his voyage under the title "Warhafftige und liebliche Beschreibung etclieher furnemen Indianischen Landschafften und Insulen, die vormals in keiner Chronicken gedacht, und erstlich in der schiffart Ulrici Schmidts von Straubingen, mit grosser gefahr erkundigt, und von ihm selber auffs fleissigst beschrieben und dargethan." The first part of this volume is the book translated into English, for the first time, from the original German, and now published by the Hakluyt Society. The second was a Spaniard, native of Jerez de la Frontera in Andalusia, named Alvar Nunez, better known by the surname which he took from his mother, Dona Teresa Cabeza de Vaca. Nunez published a narrative of the events that had happened to him during his term of office, viz., from 1541 to 1544. This record, the first published on the conquest of the Rio de la Plata and Paraguai, appeared in Valladolid in 1555, under the general title "Relacion y Comentarios de Alcar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, de lo acaecido en las dos jornadas que hizo a las Indias. The Relacion refers to his adventures in Florida, and was first published in 1542,1 while the Comentarios appeared as a second part of the new edition of his voyages under the title just mentioned. This is the second book contained in the present volume.

In 1526 Carlos I of Spain granted Panfilo de Narvaez a license to claim what is now the Gulf Coast of the United States. Panfilo de Narvaez set sail in 1527 to conquer and settle present day Florida. Setting out with a crew of approximately 600 members ultimately only four members would survive the ill-fated expedition. The journey would take these four survivors from Spain to Hispaniola and Cuba and then onto Florida. Sailing through a hurricane and other storms the expedition would finally land near Tampa Bay. Suffering from Indian attacks and the effects of poor food and disease the crew, of which there was now only eighty, decided to sail from Florida to Mexico. In 1536, the four survivors-Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, Alonso del Castillo Maldonado, Andres Dorantes de Carranza, and his enslaved Moor Estevanico-finally managed to rejoin Spanish countrymen in present-day Mexico City. Upon returning to Spain Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca would receive considerable notoriety for his published account of the ordeal.

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The publications of the Hakluyt Society (founded in 1846) made available edited (and sometimes translated) early accounts of exploration. The first series, which ran from 1847 to 1899, consists of 100 books containing published or previously unpublished works by authors from Christopher Columbus to Sir Francis Drake, and covering voyages to the New World, to China and Japan, to Russia and to Africa and India. This 1891 volume contains two sixteenth-century accounts, one Spanish and one German, of the exploration and conquest of the basin of the River Plate, which includes parts of Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay. The account of Ulrich Schmidt was written as a reply to that of Alvar Nu ez Cabeza de Vaca, the deposed governor of the area, and presents a radically different version of events. Both narratives reveal that the early Spanish conquerors of South America were riven by dissent and ambition.