A stirring account of Spain s incursion into the New World. Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo is the 16th-century author of "Historia general y natural de las Indias," a general and natural history of the peoples and places he encountered in his travels to Spanish America. Oviedo was educated at the court of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella and held several early appointments to the royal household, first as page to their son, John. In 1513, he accepted the appointment as warden of the gold mines of Castilla de Oro on the Isthmus of Panama in Darien, the first viable Spanish settlement on the...