afterwards from these two men, Vasco Calvo, brother of Diogo Calvo,
and Christovao Vieyra, who were prisoners in Canton, etc...." He
also mentions these letters in two subsequent passages, and quotes
from them. This renders it certain that Barros saw those letters;
and since they are copied into the same volume which contains the
chronicles of Nuniz and Paes, we may be sure that Barros had the
whole before him. It is of little importance to settle the question
whether the chronicles of Nuniz and Paes were sent direct to Barros
-- whether, that is, Barros himself is the addressee of the covering
letter -- or to some other official (the "our people" of the passage
from Barros last quoted); but that Barros saw them seems certain,
and it is therefore most probable that the Paris MS. was a volume of
copies prepared for him from the originals.

* * *

These documents possess peculiar and unique value; that of Paes because
it gives us a vivid and graphic account of his personal experiences
at the great Hindu capital at the period of its highest grandeur and
magnificence -- "things which I saw and came to know" he tells us --
and that of Nuniz because it contains the traditional history of the
country gathered first-hand on the spot, and a narrative of local
and current events of the highest importance, known to him either
because he himself was present or because he received the information
from those who were so. The summaries of the well-known historians
already alluded to, though founded, as I believe, partly on these
very chronicles, have taken all the life out of them by eliminating
the personal factor, the presence of which in the originals gives
them their greatest charm. Senhor Lopes, who has published these
documents in the original Portuguese in a recent work,[4] writes in his