Lasso de la Vega, Garcia (1539?-1616).

folio (324 x 194mm.), [8], 412, [2 (blank)], [2 (divisional title)], 417-1019, [1 (blank)], [8 (index)] pp., title printed in red and black, illustration: engraved portrait of Rycaut, 10 plates, binding: contemporary mottled calf, spine in six compartments with raised bands gilt, one plate with short marginal tear (not affecting image), 2 leaves browned (Kkkkk and Kkkkk4), upper cover detached, extremities rather rubbed

Wing G216 (citing this as one of four imprint variants); Sabin 98760 (citing five variant imprints)

first english edition. Garcia Lasso de la Vega ("El Inca", to distinguish him from the famous poet of the same name), was the son of a Spanish conquistador Sebastián Garcilaso de la Vega and of Princess Isabel Chimpu Ocllo, grand-daughter of the last Inca emperor.

"[Rycaut] had a very slight knowledge of the Spanish language and he did not scruple to make wild guesses at the meaning of sentences, and to omit whole chapters. Thus he only gives fourteen out of the twenty-six chapters in the first book, and sixteen out of the twenty-six in the second" (C.S. Markham’s introduction to The first part of the Royal commentaries, 1869-1871, vol.1, p. xvi).