PEDRO SARMIENTO DE GAMBÓA was one of the most eminent Spanish scientific navigators of the sixteenth century. His admirable work up the Gulf of Trinidad and in the Straits of Magellan is well known to English naval surveyors ; but his reports have never been translated. The present volume contains translations of his narrative which was published at the end of the last century, and of his important reports which first saw the light in 1866. Some account of the surveys of Sarmiento and of his unfortunate attempt to establish a colony in the Straits of Magellan is given in Burney's Voyages. But the Admiral's authorities were confined to the published narratives, to Argensola, and to the story of Lopez Vaz in Hakluyt. He was unacquainted with the reports of Sarmiento himself, which have recently been brought to light.

To discover the birth and parentage of the great navigator it has been necessary to have recourse to an ominous authority, namely, a deposition preserved in the Records of the Inquisition. From this document it appears that his father was Bartolomè Sarmiento, a native of Pontevedra in Galicia, who married a Biscayan lady of Bilbao, named Gamboa. Pedro himself was born at Alcala de Henares in about 1532, but he was brought up in his father's home at Pontevedra, a place near the sea on the western coast of Galicia. The country round Pontevedra is watered by many streams, is well wooded, and enjoys an equable climate.