Mexico City: Imprenta del Superior Gobierno, del Br. D. Joseph Antonio da Hogal, 1770. First edition. 4to. (xx), xvi, 176, (2), 177-400, (18) pp. Title-page printed in red and in black, and with an engraved vignette. Illustrated with an engraved frontispiece and 35 engraved plates (three folding, including two maps). Three-quarter brown calf over marbled paper-covered boards, brown morocco spine label, stamped in blind and in gilt, boards and extremities rubbed and lightly worn; top edge stained dark, other edges speckled red; light scattered spotting to text. Hill, pp. 66-69; Sabin 42065; Wagner, The Spanish Southwest 152

A handsome first edition of this "important and highly esteemed work, containing the celebrated letters of Cortes to the Emperor Charles V." (Sabin). Lorenzana collected the historical documents for this work while Archbishop of Mexico from 1766-72, and includes the second, third, and fourth letters of Cortes, information relating to the conquest and early history of New Spain, as well as an account of Cortes's voyage to Baja California and notices of subsequent expeditions to California up to 1769. It also contains significant illustrations, including between pp. 176-177, 31 full-page engraved plates depicting a Mexican codex with hierographic characters, with a transcription and translation related to the tributes paid to Aztec Emperor Montezuma by various towns prior to the Spanish conquest. Of the two maps, the larger depicts New Spain with Cortes's routes, while the second smaller map shows Baja California and the West Coast of Mexico. According to Lorenzana this was copied from the original manuscript created in 1541 and held in the Cortes family archive (which has apparently been lost), and which first established that California was a peninsula and not an island.