p155  Antonio de Ulloa

I

As a colonial and naval official, Antonio de Ulloa failed conspicuously in some of his most important undertakings and, though he was the author of several books, Fitzmauriceº-Kelly's New History of Spanish Literature does not even mention his name. He is, nevertheless, a significant figure in the history of his age, which was the age of the enlightenment in Europe as a whole and of the Bourbon renaissance in Spain. Two of his books about Spanish America were widely read in western Europe during his lifetime and both of them, together with another work published posthumously, are still highly esteemed by historians; and an inquiry into the reasons for the repeated failures of this exceptionally intelligent and upright servant of the crown possesses interest for all students of history of the Spanish empire. That no one has ever written a good biography of Ulloa​1 is probably explained  p156 by his versatility, the wide geographical range of his activities, and the dispersion of the sources relating to his career. The present article makes no pretense to being definitive, but it is based upon a study of important manuscript sources​2 and it gives, I believe, a better rounded and more accurate account of Ulloa's life than any that has been published heretofore.

Antonio de Ulloa was born at Seville, Spain, on January 12, 1716.​3 About this time, there occurred two events which were to have considerable influence upon his career. Just before his birth the war of the Spanish Succession came to an end and a branch of the house of Bourbon was firmly established on the throne of Spain. The coming of the Bourbons opened up a long period of reform in the administration of Spain and its colonies and brought Spain back into the main current of European thought. Just after Ulloa's birth the monopoly of trade with Spanish America was transferred from Seville to Cadiz.​4 The loss of the monopoly that had  p157 made Seville for nearly two centuries the commercial metropolis of the Indies did not bring about an immediate abatement of interest on the part of the Sevillanos in a region that had long been their peculiar province; but now that they were no longer the chief beneficiaries of Spain's venerable colonial system, they could regard it with more detachment and in a more critical spirit than formerly.

It is, therefore, not surprising either that many of Ulloa's activities, both literary and administrative, had to do with Spanish America, or that, both as official and as writer, he called attention to serious faults in the colonial system. The special character of the interests that he developed was also an obvious result of influences to which he was exposed early in life. His father was Bernardo de Ulloa, who gained some repute as an economist his tutor, Fray Vázquez Tinoco, instructor in mathematics in the colegio of Santo Tomás at Seville.​5 To the former he doubtless owed his interest in the social sciences; to the latter, that in the exact sciences.

In 1729, he was sent to Cadiz to seek a place in the Guardias Marinas, a select corps recruited from the sons of the Spanish nobility and devoted to the study of mathematics, astronomy, and navigation.​6 While waiting for a vacancy to occur, he sought to gain practical experience in navigation by taking service at his own expense in a fleet of galleons commanded by Manuel López de Pintado. The cruise lasted two years (1730‑1732) and took him to America for the first time — to Cartagena de Indias, Portobelo, Havana, and Santo Domingo.7

Admitted to the Guardias Marinas on November 28, 1733,  p158 he was almost immediately sent with a fleet to reinforce Naples; and he returned to Spain at the end of 1734 just in time to take part in a scientific expedition that was to give him occupation of one sort or another for the next fifteen years and enable him to make an enduring name for himself. Scientists were already agreed that the earth was not a perfect sphere, but there was no agreement as to whether the greater diameter passed through the poles or through the equator. The problem was one in which, as Ulloa subsequently expressed it, "not only geography and cosmography are interested, but also navigation, astronomy, and other arts and sciences of public utility".​8 To settle the question the French Academy of Sciences decided to send one group of scientists to measure an arc of meridian at the equator and another to make a similar measurement as near the north pole as was possible. The only place on the equator where such an operation was then practicable was the Spanish province of Quito in the viceroyalty of Peru. Through the French foreign office, the king of Spain was persuaded to give his consent and promise his coöperation, but he did so on condition that one or two Spanish mathematicians should take part in the enterprise.​9 This was readily agreed.

The court finally decided to send not one Spanish representative but two, and the persons chosen for this difficult  p159 undertaking were the nineteen-year‑old Ulloa and his friend Jorge Juan,​10 who was his senior by only three years. Though both of them were members of the Guardias Marinas and therefore specially prepared for the kind of work they would have to do, their extreme youth makes one suspect that their appointment was obtained through personal influence. The suspicion is strengthened by the knowledge that their appointment was not made in the normal manner — that is, on the recommendation of the Consejo de Indias — but on the recommendation of the king's chief minister, José Patiño.11

The king's consent to the French expedition was formally signified in August, 1734,​12 and by the beginning of January, Juan and Ulloa had been chosen to accompany it;​13 but, proceeding with its accustomed leisureliness, the court did not complete the drawing-up of their instructions until April 22, 1735. These instructions,​14 consisting of ten articles, directed them to join the Frenchmen in Cartagena de Indias, take part in all their operations, record the results carefully, make plans of all the cities, harbors, and fortifications on their way, gather information about the soil, plants, industry, and people of the colonies, including the uncivilized Indian tribes, and make observations that would be useful for navigators. They were also instructed to use the scientific instruments belonging  p160 to the French members of the expedition until their own could be made and sent to them. Both were given the rank of lieutenant in the navy before their departure,​15 and they were promised that, upon their return to Spain, the king would reward them according to their merits.

At the very outset they had a stroke of great good fortune. A new viceroy, the Marqués de Villagarcía, was about to go out to Peru, and room was found for the two young mathematicians on board the warships, the Conqueror and the Conflagration, which were to take the viceroy and his suite to Portobelo.​16 As it happened, he was a man of good sense and education, and Juan, who travelled in his ship, seems to have made an excellent impression on him. This friendship was to prove invaluable to both Juan and his companion while they were at Quito; and it turned out that the protection of the viceroy was worth a good deal more to them then than was that of their friends at the remote Spanish court.

In Cartagena de Indias, they were joined by the much larger French party, which was headed by the talented scientists Godin, Bouguer, and La Condamine. Proceeding by way of Panama and Guayaquil,º they reached Quito in 1736. So slowly did their work progress that Juan and Ulloa's part of it was not completed until 1744. There were many reasons for the long delay. Chief among these were the differences inseparable from the character of the country in which they had to work; the controversies with the local officials in which both the French and the Spanish members of the expedition became involved; and the war between Spain and England that broke out in 1739 and lasted until long after Juan and Ulloa had sailed for Spain.

No effort will be made here to describe the technical operations that quite properly occupied most of their time or even  p161 to sketch in outline the story of the expedition. Both subjects are discussed in detail in works published by members of the expedition upon their return to Europe.​17 It is enough to say that the desired information was obtained and that Juan and Ulloa acquitted themselves most creditably, their zeal and ability soon winning the respect of the French members,​18 who were at first inclined to regard the raw young Spaniards with contempt.

One incident that occurred soon after their arrival at Quito is worth relating in some detail, for it not only illuminates one side of Ulloa's character but also brings out in high relief some important aspects of the workings of the Spanish colonial system. That incident is the violent dispute that they had in 1737 with the president of the audiencia of Quito, Joseph de Araujo y Río.​19 Though the cause of the dispute  p162 seems rather absurd to the modern mind, its consequences were almost fatal to our two young lieutenants, for it first imperiled their lives and then very nearly blighted their careers. It was the proud, high-spirited Ulloa who started the fight, and he started it because in address him President Araujo used the common form for you, ustéd, instead of the more honorific form, usía. Possessing a full sense of his importance as the son of a distinguished father, a member of the aristocratic Guardias Marinas, and an agent of the king in an expedition of international significance, Ulloa found such treatment intolerable. The character of his antagonist made the affront all the more galling, for it was notorious that Araujo y Río, who had only recently arrived in Quito, had brought with him a mule-train loaded with contraband goods which he was selling in flagrant violation of the laws he was sworn to enforce.20

To suffer an indignity at the hands of such a man was more than Ulloa could bear. After trying vainly to get satisfaction in a more decorous way, he decided to beard the lion in his den. Going to Araujo y Río's house one morning, he pushed past the servants to the presidential bed chamber, gave the august occupant a piece of his mind, and returned home a happier man. When he was overtaken by an officer sent by the outraged Araujo y Río to arrest him, he refused to submit. Juan, who had also been addressed with the denigrative usted, supported him in his refusal. They argued that, in the first place, they were naval officers and as such acknowledged no superior in Quito, and that in the second  p163 place a mere president of an audiencia had no right to interfere with agents engaged in the performance of duties for which they were commissioned by the king himself.

Araujo y Río promptly sent an armed band to take the two insolent boys dead or alive. A skirmish ensued in which blood was shed and the president's men were worsted; and Juan and Ulloa succeeded in making their way into a church where they took sanctuary. Araujo y Río then threw a cordon around the building and prepared to starve them out, swearing — according to one reliable account — that he would put them to death as soon as they fell into his hands. Though they had many friends in the higher ranks of Quito society, especially among the Jesuits, these friends were powerless to protect them against the president, who was virtually a dictator, and things might have gone hard with them had not Juan slipped out of the church under cover of night and set out for Lima to seek the viceroy's protection. He succeeded to perfection, for he reached Lima safely and obtained an order from the viceroy directing Araujo y Río to let the two young men go on about their business pending the decision of their case by the court.

That, indeed, is the course that Araujo y Río himself decided to take as soon as he learned that Juan had escaped to tell his story to the viceroy; and since he had the privilege of direct correspondence with the court he now bent all his efforts toward turning it against his antagonists. The despatches​21 in which he described how Juan and Ulloa were turning the whole province of Quito upside down by the example of their scandalous insubordination had the desired effect. At court, the case was handled by the Consejo de Indias. Already prejudiced against them because it had not been consulted about their appointment, that body recommended that Juan and Ulloa should be summarily recall to Spain and punished according to their deserts; and, although after a long delay, the king decided to let them complete their scientific  p164 mission, he approved the recommendation that they should be punished upon their return to Spain.22

Again good fortune, aided and abetted by the viceroy of Peru, came to their aid. The recommendation of the Consejo de Indias was made in March, 1738, the king's decision was embodied in a royal order issued in June, 1739,​23 and in the same year the war of Jenkins's Ear broke out between Spain and England. Invading the South Pacific, the English attacked Peru. The young naval lieutenants were now in their element. They possessed a far better knowledge of the arts of warfare and navigation than did most of the higher officials of Peru, and the viceroy gave them abundant opportunity to distinguish themselves. On two different occasions he employed them in important undertakings; they served him well; and he promoted them to the rank of captain, subject to the king's approval, and praised them highly in his despatches to the court.24

After devoting the greater part of three years to the defense of Peru, they returned to Quito for a few months in 1744 to complete their scientific mission. That done, they prepared for the long and dangerous journey back to Spain, which they accomplished not by way of Panama, as they had come, but around Cape Horn. Since the war had disrupted communications between Spain and America and prevented the regular sailing of the treasure fleets, the king had given permission to four French ships from St. Malo to call at Callao for a cargo of two million pesos.​25 Travelling separately for the better protection of the records of their work,  p165 Juan and embarked in two of these ships, which sailed from Callao on October 22, 1744. Though Juan's ship was delayed at Valparaiso by an accident, he reached Spain first arriving at Madrid in January, 1746, after an adventurous journey that carried him to St. Domingue,º Brest, and Paris. In the latter place he addressed the Academy of Sciences and was elected a corresponding member of that body.26

Ulloa's ship — hopefully named the Notre Dame de Bonne Délivrance — and its two companions got safe past Cape Horn and the enemy-infested West Indies, but at a point just north of the Azores they were attacked by English privateers. Possibly because it was the smallest and presumably the least valuable of the three French ships, the Délivrance was the only one that escaped capture. With a wholesome respect for British sea power, its captain now decided to seek safety in Acadia. They arrived at Louisbourg in August, 1745, after a comparatively uneventful voyage, and as they entered the harbor "complacency and joy swelled in every heart" at the sight of the French flags fluttering over the town. Complacency and joy soon turned to bitter disappointment, for, when it was too late to retreat, they found that the flags lied — Sir William Shirley with his doughty New Englanders and a British fleet had taken the place.27

Again, however, fortune favored Ulloa. Though he suffered the annoyance of imprisonment and another postponement of his scientific and literary labors, he was well treated in Acadia and was soon sent to London. There he continued to receive generous treatment, met many distinguished scientists and writers, and was made a fellow of the Royal Society — a signal honor for an enemy alien. After a delay caused by the uprising in Scotland, the good offices of his influential friends enabled him to recover his notes and papers, which the admiralty had turned over to the East India Company. Returning to Spain by way of Lisbon, he arrived  p166 at Madrid in July, 1746, eleven years and two months after he and Juan set out from Cadiz for Cartagena de Indias.28

II

Even if the comminatory royal order of 1739 had not been forgotten by this time, there was no disposition on the part of the court to carry out the threat it contained. In the course of the seven years that had elapsed since the issuance of the order many things had happened to reinstate Juan and Ulloa in favor. They had won high praise from the viceroy by their services in defense of Peru; they had been signally honored by two of the most distinguished learned societies in the world; Philip V, who issued the order of 1739, was dead, and his successor, Ferdinand VI, was no doubt glad to be able to signalize the beginning of his reign by a conspicuous patronage of learning. At any rate, he gave instructions through his chief minister, the Marqués de la Ensenada, that the viceroy's promotion of Juan and Ulloa to the rank of captain should be confirmed and that they should write an account of the expedition and submit it for publication at government expense.29

Though the account was not published until 1748, the writers were not responsible for the delay. Within two weeks after Ulloa's arrival in Madrid he and Juan submitted a detailed inventory of their papers and a sketch of the book that they proposed to write. It appears from this inventory that, although at the time of his capture at Louisbourg Ulloa had thrown overboard the manuscript of several sections that he  p167 had already written, all the original records of the expedition were preserved intact.​30 They were, therefore, able to proceed with the labor of composition as soon as they received the necessary authorisation and to make such rapid progress that Juan's part of the book was completed by March 22, 1747, the first half of Ulloa's by June 29 and the second half by September 22 of the same year.31

 p168  Then, however, the manuscript had to run the gauntlet of a long line of censors, and although their reports​32 were altogether favorable, save for minor criticisms, it was not until June, 1748, that the last report was submitted. The manufacture of the book also presented difficulties that delayed its appearance. Suitable paper was found in Barcelona, and the authors finally decided to content themselves with the type available in Madrid rather than take the time to get a superior variety in Holland, as at first they planned to do. The problem of the engravings was not so easily solved. The only engraver in Madrid who could do the work wanted to take a year for only half of it, and the authors had to send their sketches to Paris, where all the engravings were made within three months.33

At last, all these difficulties were surmounted and the book was published in 1748. It consisted of five volumes. The first four volumes, entitled Relación histórica del Viage a la América meridional and containing an account of experiences of Juan and Ulloa from 1735 to 1746, together with a description of the people and places they saw, were written by Ulloa; the fifth volume, containing a technical account of the scientific work of the expedition, was written by Juan.​34 The division of labor was a natural one. Ulloa was the better writer of the two, and his encyclopaedic mind and wide-ranging curiosity fitted him admirably for the writing of the general account, which, aside from its narrative of travel and adventure, contains observations on history, anthropology, geology, linguistics, morals, and many other subjects. In short, he not only wrote four-fifths of the coöperative work: he wrote the only part of it that ever interested the general public. It was also Ulloa who handled the financial accounts and saw the book through the press. And yet, since Juan had shared his labors  p169 in Peru, Juan's name appeared on the title-page of all five volumes; and, since Juan outranked him in the navy, Juan's name was printed before Ulloa's on every title-page.

The book did not disappoint the hope, expressed by several of those who read it in manuscript, that it would make a noise in Europe. That national pride had a great deal to do with the publication of it is apparent from all the records. In the opinion of one of the censors, the Marqués de la Regalía, the book would show the world "that the Spaniards have not lost either the appetite or the talent for great undertakings"; and another, the distinguished Jesuit scholar, Andrés Marcos Burriel, wrote,

It was this thirst for fame among the literati of Europe that induced the government to draw aside the veil of secrecy with which it had hitherto sought to hide the Indies from the prying eyes of foreigners. The decision was made all the easier by the realisation that foreign interlopers had already penetrated the veil in many places and that in some respects other nations were better informed about the Indies than was Spain itself.36

Distributed broadcast by the court, the book at once met  p170 with acclaim despite the fact that it was written in Spanish, a language not widely known in other countries even in learned circles. Copies for sale were distributed among the provincial intendants of Spain, and complimentary copies were sent to the kings of Portugal, Naples, and France, to the Royal Society of London, the French Academy of Sciences, and similar societies, and as a gesture of triumph — to the French members of the expedition, Bouguer and La Condamine, whom Juan and Ulloa had beaten into print. Fathers Berthier and Clairvoix of Paris — the latter of whom was then engaged in writing his history of Paraguay — read it at once, praised it highly, and expressed the opinion that it would put the French associates of Juan and Ulloa to shame.​37 As time went on, the solid merits and unique value of the book were more and more widely recognised, and ultimately the language difficulty was removed by its translation into German (1751), French (1752), English (1758), and Dutch (1771). The English translation, which was made by John Adams, passed through five editions (1758, 1760, 1772, 1806, and 1807),​38 and, with a few omissions, it was again printed in 1813 in John Pinkerton's General Collection of Voyages. In the present article the title of the English translation, A Voyage to South America, is used in referring to the book.

As soon as this task was completed, Juan and Ulloa wrote another account of their observations which is comparable in scope and importance to their Voyage to South America. This  p171 is the confidential report which is generally known today by the title under which it was first published many years later, Noticias secretas de América, but which the authors themselves entitled Discurso, y Reflexiones Políticas sobre el Estado presente de los Reynos del Perù . . . .​39 Containing valuable information about the military defenses of Peru and a frank revelation of many faults in the Spanish régime there — notably the venality of the colonial officials, the tyranny of the corregidores, the exploitation of the Indians by the village priests, the horrors of the mita, and the dangerous antagonism existing between the creoles and the European Spaniards — it was of course written for the eyes of the court alone. Not until near eighty years later did it become known outside of court circles. In 1826, David Barry, an English merchant of Cadiz, somehow got hold of a copy which he published at London, with some slight alterations, under the title Noticias secretas de América.40

 p172  Quite naturally, the book is galling to Spanish pride, and historians of that country have tried in various ways to deprive it of its full effect. Rafael Altamira even went so far as to question its authenticity; and while Cervera and Ballesteros,​41 after studying the problem more carefully than did  p173 Altamira, accepted the Noticias as authentic in most respects, they state their conclusions in the same way as to make it appear that the book does Spain a substantial injustice. They assert that, by changing a word here and there, Barry made the published version criticise the Spanish colonial system more harshly than does the original manuscript; that Barry was guilty of unethical conduct in publishing a confidential report; and that, even though the Noticias secretas is substantially identical with the original manuscript, neither the one nor the other represents the views that Juan and Ulloa would have expressed if they had designed their report for publication. It is hardly necessary to point out that most historians would regard the confidential nature of the report as the best justification for publishing it and as the best guarantee of its fidelity to fact and of the veracity of its authors. We may readily agree with Ballesteros that a new edition, based directly on the original manuscript preserved in the Biblioteca Nacional at Madrid, should be published; but until that is done, it should be distinctly understood that there are no important differences between the published version and the original manuscript,​42 and that the authenticity of the latter  p174 is not open to serious question. It seems to have been mainly the work of Ulloa, for it bears the stamp of the same encyclopaedic, inquiring mind that produced the Voyage to South America and the paper and handwriting bear a very close resemblance​43 to those of other documents of the period of which Ulloa was unquestionably the author.

Some valuable information on this subject is contained in an autograph letter written by Ulloa in 1762 and recently discovered by the present writer. This letter,​44 addressed to the secretary of state for the colonies, Julián de Arriaga, was written in reply to a royal order of 1761 directing Ulloa to make a confidential report on the conduct of the treasury officials (oficiales reales) of the province of Huancavélica, Peru, of which he was then governor. In the course of the letter, which described scandalous abuses committed by the treasury officials in connivance with their superior at Lima, he said:

This letter points to some interesting conclusions. In the first place, it proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that a confidential report on Peru was written by Ulloa in 1748 or 1749, and that that report discussed at least one of the subjects that are discussed in both the manuscript preserved in the Biblioteca Nacional and the Noticias secretas, and dealt with it in the same critical spirit. In the second place, the letter heightens the lurid effect of the Noticias secretas, for it shows that if the report of 1749 had been written from Ulloa's larger experience of 1762, he would have painted an even darker picture of the Spanish colonial régime than the one of which apologists for Spain are now complaining. In the third place, the letter shows that the report of 1749 was not pigeonholed and entirely forgotten, as is sometimes assumed, but that it was read by one of the officials of the colonial department some time after Arriaga took charge of it, which was in the year 1754.

Finally, the letter to Arriaga strengthens the assumption that the confidential report of 1749 was mainly the work of Ulloa, for Ulloa speaks of it as "the report that I wrote", not as "the report that Juan and I wrote". To be sure, Juan's name appears on the title-page along with Ulloa's; but it also appears on the title-page of the first four volumes of the Voyage to South America, which were certainly written by Ulloa alone, just as Ulloa's name appears on the title-page of the fifth volume, which was written by Juan alone. In other  p176 words, the title-pages of the works that Juan and Ulloa wrote at this period are misleading; and if we are to determine which of the two wrote a given book, we must draw our conclusion from some other source than the title-page. In the case of the confidential report on Peru, the evidence we have mentioned, though not conclusive, points to Ulloa as the sole author.​44a

III

Upon the completion of the report in question, Ulloa was sent to France and the Netherlands on a special mission that occupied him for the next two years and that ultimately carried him to Denmark and Sweden as well. His passport stated that he was to go to Paris to study mathematics, but his secret instructions show that his mission was part of a plan to promote the industry and commerce and strengthen the military defenses of Spain. His principal duty was to obtain information about the ports, harbors, roads, canals, and factories of France and the Netherlands, and to induce skilled workmen to emigrate to Spain. For this purpose he was to visit Toulon, Marseilles, Bordeaux, Brest, Rochefort, Lyon, and other cities, as well as Paris, and was then to proceed to the Netherlands.45

He executed his mission to the complete satisfaction of the court. Going by way of Barcelona and Marseilles, he arrived in Paris in January, 1750. In the summer he visited Brest and other Atlantic ports of France. In February of the next year, the court wrote him that, since he had made so much progress and was needed in Spain, he should return as soon as he had visited the Netherlands; but he asked permission to  p177 include Denmark and Sweden in his tour and his request was granted. By December, he was back in Paris and early in 1752 he returned to Madrid. The results of his observations and inquiries were embodied in a series of reports that he wrote after his return.​46 They contain a great deal of valuable information, and if the one that describes the roads of France were published, it would take rank with the well known work on the same subject that Arthur Young wrote a generation later.

Rejoining the Guardias Marinas at Cadiz, he remained there until 1757. During this period the court frequently consulted him about important projects, such as the founding of a museum of natural history and an astronomical observatory. In 1757, he gave up the naval for the colonial service, accepting appointment to a key post of great difficulty in Peru — the governor­ship of Huancavélica and the superintendence of its quicksilver mine. The post was an important one because that mine was the only one of its kind in America and was in normal times the sole source of supply of an article which was indispensable for the working of the rich silver mines of Potosí.​47 The post was an extremely difficult one, partly because of the technical problem of maintaining an adequate volume of production in a mine that had been in operation for nearly two centuries, and partly because the miners and local officials were leagued together in a fraud ring that was apparently invincible.48

 p178  The records suggest that Ulloa's old friend, Jorge Juan, who also was serving with the Guardias Marinas at that time and was frequently consulted by the court, had something to do with the appointment;​49 but that it was made in recognition of his merits is shown by the memorandum of Arriaga's advice to the king in the matter. "It is very important," said Arriaga,

Ulloa professed to be not at all eager to make the change. Surrounded by his relatives and friends and with congenial work to do, he found life at Cadiz very pleasant. In prestige, he said, his present career in the navy was not inferior to the one offered him in the colonies. "It also has the advantage," he added, "that here I am free from many cares and from the vexations [desazones] that might unexpectedly occur in that occupation."​51 If, as this passage suggests, the information  p179 about Huancavélica that he had acquired during his first residence in Peru​52 caused him to view with some apprehension the prospect of governing that stormy province, he was soon to find out that his fears were only too well justified. But the larger salary — 8000 pesos a year instead of the 4800 pesos that he was receiving at Cadiz​53 — proved an irresistible bait, and he accepted. Perhaps the recent fall from power of his patron, the Marqués de la Ensenada, also disposed him to try his fortune in a new career.54

Sailing from Spain at the end of January, 1758,​55 he arrived in Huancavélica on November 2 and took over the government two days later. His first despatch to Arriaga, dated November 15,​56 describes a clash he had already had with the miners, and the fight thus early begun continued with increasing bitterness throughout his administration. At first, he met with some success in his effort to introduce efficiency and honesty into the operation of the mine, the payment of cash advances to the miners by the government, and the repayment  p180 of those sums to the treasury; but he was doomed to failure by the collusion that existed between the miners and their abettors, who included officials, ecclesiastical as well as secular, both at Huancavélica and at the viceregal capital, Lima. The harder he strove to destroy the net of fraud that enmeshed his province, the more astutely did his powerful enemies move to checkmate him and bring about his ruin. Their influence was so widespread and reached into such high places that they were able to turn even the viceroy and the audiencia against the luckless governor.57

By May, 1762, Ulloa was confessing himself utterly exhausted and hopelessly beaten. In a letter in which he used the same word, desazones, that had betrayed his misgivings about the post at Huancavélica while he was still debating whether to accept it, he implored the court to rescue him from a situation made unendurable by the "vexations, mortifications, and rebuffs" that he was suffering.​58 In August of that year, he wrote the confidential report on the misconduct of the treasury officials of Huancavélica from which we have already quoted.​59 In another part of that report he said:

 p181  Even more serious charges appear in other letters, for he asserted that both the audiencia of Lima and the viceroy, Manuel de Amat, were actuated by dishonorable motives in their opposition to him.​60 The audiencia, he said, hoped to discredit him in order to pave the way for a return to the system under which Huancavélica was formerly governed — that is, by rotating the office of governor and superintendent among the members of that tribunal, each of whom would enrich himself during his administration. As for Amat, he was angry because Ulloa refused to pay him the annual bribe of 10,000 or 12,000 pesos a year that he was accustomed to collect from the government of Huancavélica. There was probably some truth in these charges, for the viceroy and the audiencia, far from giving Ulloa the support to which he was entitled, issued a series of unjust and humiliating decrees that destroyed the last vestige of his authority over his unruly province; and it may be added that by the end of his term as viceroy, Amat's name had become a byword for corruption throughout Peru.

By the summer of 1763, Ulloa's complaints and prayers for relief, together with the vicious charges preferred against him by the viceroy — they included almost every offence from technical incompetence to embezzlement — had moved even the leisurely Spanish court to action. A mass of documents relating to the dispute was collected and sent to Jorge Juan for his opinion. His report​61 was favorable to Ulloa, whom he described as "certainly one of the most intelligent of Spaniards"; but, he continued, no good purpose would be served by keeping him in Huancavélica, where he was at the mercy of his enemies. It was accordingly recommended that he should be recalled and employed elsewhere. On January 4,  p182 1764, a royal order to this effect was issued;​62 and since the court probably realised that his enemies in Peru would hold him there if possible, so that they might continue to persecute him, the order warned the viceroy that Ulloa's departure must not be prevented or delayed on any pretext whatever. Subsequent events​63 showed that but for the peremptory terms of these instruction he might have been forced to spend the rest of his life in Peru contending on unequal terms with the officials, high and low, whose venality he had done so much to expose and — through no fault of his own — so little to correct.64

This episode is a most significant one for the history of Spain's colonial administration. There was abundant evidence that Ulloa was in the right and that the administration of Peru was honeycombed with corruption. And yet the Spanish court was unable to sustain him; it was not even able to punish the corrupt squadron who were persecuting him for his honesty; the utmost that it could do was to rescue him from their clutches.

 p183  Toward the end of 1764, Ulloa, armed with the peremptory royal order of January 4, succeeded in shaking off his enemies and left Peru. Sailing from Callao to Panama, he proceeded thence to Havana where he had been told to await further instructions. Before these arrived, he wrote Arriaga signifying his readiness to continue to serve the king in America if that were necessary, but begging the minister to help him to escape from "these ungrateful climes".​65 His Peruvian "Purgatory", as he called it,​66 had left him with no desire to protract his stay in the brave new world.

Unfortunately, it soon turned out that the king did have need of him in America. Louisiana had recently been added to Spain by France and just at the time when Ulloa's recall from Peru released him for service elsewhere, the court was preparing to take possession of the new province. Perhaps because it was thought that his two-year residence and his eight-year association with the French academicians in Peru fitted him to govern colonists most of whom were French, or perhaps merely because he was available, the king appointed him governor of Louisiana.

The unhappy story of his administration is so well known that the details need not be repeated here.​67 It should be pointed out, however, that while he again failed conspicuously, as he had done in Peru, this second failure, like the first, was due to circumstances over which he had no control. His own errors did not contribute to it in any important degree. The irritation caused by his unbending pride was a mere trifle in comparison with the hatred he incurred as the loyal agent of a power that the Louisianians cordially detested.

Commissioned in 1765, he went from Havana to New Orleans  p184 early in 1766.​68 The troops and funds with which the court had provided him were utterly inadequate to his needs, and he was forced to leave the administration in the hands of the last French governor, Aubry, who henceforth governed the province in the name of the king of Spain. Though Ulloa warned the court time and time again that the situation was an impossible one and that Spanish authority over the people of Louisiana could not be maintained unless he received heavy reinforcements,​69 little attention was paid to his warnings, and the measures adopted at Madrid only made the situation worse. Their indecisive character kept alive the creoles' hope that Louisiana might yet return to the possession of France and thereby fostered the spirit of fractiousness that was already so strong in them; and the court's commercial decree of 1768 was the immediate cause of the rebellion that drove Ulloa out of the province in October of the same year. Aubry was probably right when he said that insubordination had reigned in Louisiana for ten years past and that the storm of 1768 was necessary to clear the air.​70 Only by adopting a clear-cut policy and by supporting it with a sufficient show of  p185 force could the court have saved the situation; but that is precisely what it failed most conspicuously to do.

Though it must have been as obvious then as it is now that Ulloa was not responsible for the fiasco it brought his career in the colonial service to a close. He was doubtless well pleased with this result. Had he not, even before he knew that he was to go to Louisiana, begged Arriaga to rescue him from "these ungrateful climes" of America? At any rate, after his expulsion from New Orleans he hastened to return to Spain without waiting to get permission from the court.71

With the exception of one more unfortunate episode, the remaining twenty-seven years of his life were comparatively calm, happy, and uneventful. The court was apparently convinced that he had done the best he could in Louisiana, for he was permitted to resume his career in the navy, was soon promoted to the rank of gefe de escuadra (rear admiral), and continued to hold responsible posts to the end of his days. In 1777, he went to Vera Cruz in command of the last of the famous treasure fleets (flotas). For once he was altogether successful, and at the end of June, 1778, this son of Seville brought back to the rival city of Cadiz a treasure that he described as the richest ever sent from New Spain to the mother country.​72 We may note in passing that the court's solicitude for the safety of this fleet was partly responsible for its refusal to support the pro-American policy of France early in 1778 and for delaying Spain's entry into the war of the American Revolution.

 p186  In 1779, occurred the unfortunate episode mentioned above. Spain had by this time been drawn into the war with Great Britain, and Ulloa was given command of a squadron with orders to cruise between Galicia and the Azores. Upon his return from the cruise he was tried on various charges, the most serious of which were that he was responsible for the loss of a Spanish ship and for the escape of a fleet of British merchantmen would he should have captured. The court of inquiry gave him a complete vindication.​73 There is an amusing but apocryphal story​74 to the effect that he failed to fulfil the purpose of his mission because he was sailing under sealed orders and became so engrossed in the reading of a scientific book that he forgot to open the orders until it was too late. A pretty story — but, if we are to believe the voluminous records of the trial, there is not a word of truth in it. There is no allusion to it in those records; on the other hand, the findings of the court of inquiry state that, far from being guilty of any neglect, Ulloa was entitle to reward for having done everything in his power to comply with his instructions in spite of the most unfavorable weather and the poor condition of the ships assigned to him.

IV

After his return to Spain from Louisiana, he devoted a large part of his time to writing. His most important work of this period is his Noticias Americanas (Madrid, 1772), which should not by any means be confused with the Voyage  p187 to South America of 1748.​75 The book published in 1772 is both briefer and more comprehensive than the earlier one, for, while it consists of only one volume, it deals with the whole of Spanish South America and the eastern part of North America; and it contains information about Louisiana and Florida and the quicksilver mine at Huancavélica that is not found in the Voyage and that was obviously gathered by Ulloa during his service as a colonial official from 1757 to 1768.​76 The Voyage, moreover, is primarily a narrative account written for the purpose of advertising the part taken by Spain in the important scientific expedition of 1735‑1744; whereas the Noticias Americanas is almost wholly descriptive and expository, and its declared purpose was to contribute to the progress of mankind by making an addition to man's store of systematic knowledge.

In view of the character of the book and of the fact that Spain's policy of shrouding the Indies in secrecy had already been abandoned with the publication of the Voyage a quarter of a century earlier, it is not surprising that permission to publish was given quickly and without hesitation. Ulloa submitted the manuscript to Arriaga who on April 3, 1772, sent it to the Consejo de Indias for action. Within three months after the fiscal of the Consejo received it he submitted a favorable report, and the book was published the same year. Again Ulloa was regarded as the champion of Spain in the intellectual lists of Europe, for the fiscal declared in his report that Ulloa had already given "repeated proofs of his erudition and critical discernment", and that this new book would save Spain from the common reproach among foreigners to the effect that, since the discovery and conquest of the Indies, it had never taken the trouble to inform the rest of the world  p188 about "the rare and precious things that they [the Indies] contain".​77 This book did not share the popularity abroad of the Voyage, but it was translated into French and German​78 and a second Spanish edition was published in 1792.

Ulloa was less fortunate with a survey of the navies of Europe that he submitted to Arriaga in 1773. He began writing it in 1755, was interrupted by his appointments to Huancavélica and Louisiana, and at last completed it toward the end of 1772. This time the fiscal's report was adverse. He criticised Ulloa's style on the ground that he used too many Gallicisms — a complaint that Spanish critics have frequently made against the writings of their compatriots. He dismissed as worthy of a philosopher rather than of a practical politician Ulloa's suggestion that, for the sake of economy, the European powers should reduce their navies to one-tenth of their existing strength; and he said he doubted whether the departments of foreign affairs and the navy would consent to the publication of the book. The latter consideration was probably decisive, although Ulloa declared that his manuscript did not contain any information about the Spanish navy that was not already in the possession of foreigners. The license was not granted and the treatise was never published.79

Ulloa continued in active service to the end of his days — at the time of his death he was chief of operations of the navy​80 — but in the last twenty years of his life he did not  p189 write anything of importance.​81 He was growing old; perhaps he was deeply discouraged over the rejection of his treatise on the navies of Europe; and perhaps his official duties and his growing family, to which he was devoted, left him no time for writing.

We know little about his private life. It appears that he was entirely dependent upon his salary save for his wife's dowry, which was probably not large.​82 This may explain why, although his interests were scientific and literary, he devoted so much of his time to writing government reports, surveys, and similar documents, which might be expected to win him promotion and an increase in salary. His wife was Francisca Ramírez de Laredo, daughter of the Conde de San Javier of Lima. The marriage took place in Louisiana early in 1767.​83 They had nine children, the first four of whom were born within a period of seven years. One of his sons, Francisco Javier de Ulloa, subsequently rose to the rank of admiral and was twice secretary of the navy.

A delightful sketch of his life at home was drawn by the English traveler, clergyman, and dabbler in science, John Townsend,​84 who visited him at Cadiz when he was some  p190 seventy years of age. "I found him perfectly the philosopher," says Townsend,

Surely not much money — rare coins, no doubt. Ulloa had neglected a golden opportunity to enrich himself in Peru, and if his wife ever possessed a great fortune it was gone now. His treasures were the fossils — "he shewed me a variety of seashells, collected by himself near the summits of the highest mountains in America" — the books, the antiquities, the mathematical instruments, that reminded him of a life well spent in the pursuit of knowledge. But he looked forward as well as back. A true philosopher in the eighteenth-century meaning of the word, he knew the uses of posterity; and he was wrapped up in his own posterity. Townsend found him "surrounded by his children, with the youngest about two years old, playing on his knee" and he noted that one of Ulloa's treasures, "a curious mummy from the Canary Islands", had served as a plaything for the children, who had "amused themselves by drawing its teeth, and breaking off its limbs". Ulloa's last book was entitled Conversations with his three Sons in the naval Service.​85 It was published in 1795, and he died on July fifth of the same year.86

The foregoing account of Ulloa's public career suggests  p191 some of the limitations of the vaunted Bourbon renaissance in Spain, which was almost precisely coterminous with his life. It reveals the existence in three important spheres — the colonial administration, the court, and the navy department — of serious and long-standing defects which it was apparently impossible to correct even in that age of revival. The story of his sufferings in the purgatory of Huancavélica forms a melancholy footnote to the tale of iniquity told in his own Noticias secretas. His expulsion from Louisiana was clearly the result of the dilatoriness and ineptitude of the Spanish court; and yet his expulsion occurred almost a decade after the accession of Charles III, whose reign is generally regarded as marking the flood-tide of the Bourbon renaissance. Though his failure in his cruise to the Azores in 1779 was due in part to foul weather — the "wind and waves" of which Philip II so justly complained after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, and which showed a strange persistence in destroying the best laid plans of Spain's naval strategists — it was largely owing to the miserable condition of the ships with which he was forced to make the cruise; in other words, to the same inadequacy of preparation that, ever since the time of Philip II, had made it so much easier for wind and waves to do their work of destruction.

Ulloa's writings form an important chapter in the history of another and a more edifying aspect of the Bourbon renaissance, the intellectual revival of the eighteenth century. His well written and widely read Voyage to South America provided Europeans with the first comprehensive and authoritative account of that region. The Noticias secretas de América, of which he was at least the joint and possibly the sole author, probably stimulated the reform movement already in progress at the Spanish court and is still one of the principal sources of information about Spanish America in the later colonial period. His Noticias Americanas is important not only because of the quaint and curious lore that it contains, but also because of the emphasis that the author places upon  p192 the value of a comparative study of cultures. And finally, following Menéndez y Pelayo,​87 we may note that Ulloa belonged to the small and select group of practical scientists who brought about a notable revival of scientific studies in Spain. Among other things, he established the first museum of natural history in Madrid, and the first metallurgical laboratory; he brought from London to Spain the first scientific information about electricity and magnetism — information that he doubtless obtained from his friend William Watson; and Abbé Raynal rightly credits him with having given Europe its first knowledge of platinum.88

His mind was neither bold nor original and, though he was a reformer, he was by no means a revolutionist. He believed in progress through enlightenment but he also believed that that progress would have to be gradual and very slow; and, unwaveringly loyal to king, church, and country, he was convinced that there was ample room for the process within the limits of the established order. It is significant that many of his friends and admirers were Jesuits and that he accorded the order sympathetic treatment in his books. It is also significant that, after discussing the problem of the development of different forms of plant and animal life from a common origin, he concluded that the problem was insoluble and that these developments were merely another evidence of the workings of an inscrutable providence.​89 Here was no Lamarck or Darwin in the making.

Ulloa's liking for the Jesuits did not prevent him from finding people of a very different sort congenial. He was as much at home in the secular atmosphere of London and Paris  p193 as in the ecclesiastical atmosphere of Madrid; and, we may add, he was much more at home in all of those places than in America, which he found a fascinating subject for inquiry and speculation but not a desirable place of residence. He succeeded in doing something that only the rarer spirits can do, for, though he borrowed freely from abroad, he never lost his native character. Without ceasing to be a Spaniard, he became a cultured European; and that was no mean achievement for a Spaniard of his generation.

Aside from the translation of his books into several languages, there are other evidences of the recognition that he won outside of Spain. In 1747, the year before the Voyage to South America was published, Voltaire spoke of Spain as a country that had hardly any heroes and not a single writer. By the time he published his Dictionnaire philosophique (1764) he knew that Spain had at least one writer, for he cited the Voyage and referred to its author as "le philosophe militaire Ulloa". In another work, published four years later, he again referred to Ulloa, this time as "si célèbre par les services qu'il a rendus à la physique, et par l'Histoire philosophique de ses voyages".​90 A very different sort of person from Voltaire, but one who shared Voltaire's enthusiasm for enlightenment, also used the word "philosopher" in referring to Ulloa, who was to him an "object of veneration". That person was, of course, Joseph Townsend, whom we have just quoted. And several learned bodies — among them the academies of Stockholm and Berlin, as well as the Royal Society of London — honored Ulloa and themselves by electing him to member­ship.

 p194  Ulloa's writings breathe the spirit of didacticism that was characteristic of the literature of western Europe in that age; but his was a gentle didacticism. A fisher of minds, not of souls, he baited the hook of instruction with entertainment. The subtitle of his Noticias Americanas contains the word entretenimientos — entertainments, amusements — and he called the subdivisions of the book not chapters but entretenimientos. His avowed purpose, which was the same as that of many of his contemporaries in other fields, was to instruct by amusing.

He also shared the humanitarian zeal that was beginning to spread over Europe. In this respect, however, he showed himself not so much a cosmopolite as a follower of one of the best traditions of his native land; for his humanitarianism, like that of the sixteenth-century Bartolomé de las Casas, from which it stems, found its chief expression in an effort to ameliorate the wretched lot of the Indians of Spanish America. Though he might well have saved some of his sympathy for the downtrodden masses of his fellow-countrymen, we must do him the justice to repeat that the circumstances of his life fixed his attention, and kept it fixed, upon Spanish America rather than upon Spain itself.

There were large realms of ideas as well as whole physical continents that lay beyond the margin of his speculations; but within these limits, and in his own way, he did valiant service in the cause of justice and enlightenment. If some new Parrington should write a history of main currents in Spanish thought, Ulloa would surely occupy an honorable place in it.

Arthur P. Whitaker.

Cornell University.

---

The Author's Notes:

1 Sempere's sketch (cited below, note 30) is most useful for Ulloa's scientific and literary activities. The article on Antonio de Ulloa in the Enciclopedia Universal Ilustrada is not only very brief but also incomplete and in some respects inaccurate; and the one in Martín Fernández de Navarrete, Biblioteca Marítima Española (2 vols., Madrid, 1851), I.189‑201, while more satisfactory than the preceding in several respects, gives almost no information about Ulloa's administrations in Huancavélica and Louisiana. Neither article is based upon an extensive use of the abundant manuscript sources, and neither even so much as mentions the bitter controversies (described in the present article) in which Ulloa became engaged while at Quito in 1737 and at Huancavélica in 1758‑1764. The "vida de Ulloa" by Travieso mentioned in the Enciclopedia article is not, as one would naturally suppose, a life of Antonio de Ulloa — Travieso never wrote any such book or article — but Travieso's sketch of Antonio's son, Francisco Javier de Ulloa, which was published in the Crónica Naval de España, V, no. 6 (November, 1857), pp695 ff. There is a sketch of Antonio de Ulloa by Francisco de Hoyos entitled Biografía del Teniente General de la Real Armada Don Antonio de Ulloa (19pp, Madrid, 1844), a copy of which is preserved in the Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid. The writer of the Enciclopedia article apparently got a good deal of his information from this Hoyos pamphlet. For information about the latter I am indebted to Mr. Lewis Hanke of Harvard University, who found it while he was very kindly aiding me in my search for the supposed life of Antonio de Ulloa by Travieso.

2 The manuscript sources used in the preparation of this article are preserved in the Archivo General de Indias, Seville, and the Archivo General de Simancas. Other materials, preserved in the Museo Naval, Madrid, which contains the archives formerly housed in the Depósito hidrográfico, were not consulted. The extent to which the manuscript sources relating to Ulloa have been neglected by previous writers is perhaps best illustrated by the article by Ramón de Manjarrés, "Don Jorge Juan y Don Antonio de Ulloa. La Medición del Arco Terrestre. La Historia del Platino," Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos, September-December, 1912, pp290‑333, and January-February, 1913, pp58‑91. The author himself prefaces his account with the statement that it is based "almost exclusively" on Juan and Ulloa's Relación Histórica published in 1748 — a book that is easily available either in Spanish or in various translations; the manuscript sources were hardly touched.

3 Navarrete, II.189.

4 The royal order transferring the Casa de Contratación from Seville to Cadiz was issued in 1717 and executed in 1718. A recent work dealing with this question is Albert Girard's La Rivalité commerciale et maritime entre Séville et Cadiz jusqu'à la fin du XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1932).

5 Navarrete, II.189. Bernardo de Ulloa was the author of two books dealing with Spanish manufactures and commerce (Madrid, 1740 and 1741). He also held important posts in the municipal government of Seville.

6 For information about the Guardias Marinas, see Cesáreo Fernández Duro, Armada Española, VI (Madrid, 1900), 212.

7 Navarrete, II.190.

8 Juan and Ulloa, A Voyage to South America (second ed., Dublin, 1765), I.21.

9 Consulted by the king about the French request, the Consejo de Indias submitted two favorable reports (May 6 and July 12, 1734) advising that one or two Spanish representatives accompany the expedition (Archivo General de Indias, Audiencia de Lima, leg. 590, Patiño to Francisco de Vara y Valdés, El Pardo, January 4, 1735). On August 12, 1734, a royal order was sent to the viceroy of Peru notifying him that the king had decided to grant the desired permission to the French scientists (ibid., Indiferente General, legajo 956, entry in "Indice General de los Rs. despachos que se remiten al distrito de las Audiencias del Peru y Na. Espa. de la Negociación de Indiferente"). The order notifying the French government to the same effect was dated August 14 (ibid., Audiencia de Lima, legajo 590, cédula dated San Ildefonso, August 20, 1734). Hereafter the following abbreviations will be used: AGI for Archivo General de Indias; and leg. for legajo.

10 There is a very good life of Juan by F. Cervera y Jiménez Alfaro (Jorge Juan, Madrid, 1927: vol. V, Series F of the Colección Hispana, edited by Antonio Ballesteros y Beretta).

11 AGI, Audiencia de Quito, leg. 104, consulta del Consejo de Indias, March 24, 1738. Patiño had long taken a special interest in the Guardias Marinas (Fernández Duro, VI.212); and it is possible that he was personally acquainted with Antonio's father, for he was at one time president of the Casa de Contratación and also member of a commission appointed to inquire into the dispute between Seville and Cadiz (Girard, pp81, 83, 84).

12 See above, note 9.

13 AGI, Audiencia de Lima, leg. 590, cédula dated El Pardo, January 4, 1735, signed "Yo El Rey," and countersigned "Dn Joseph Patiño"; ibid., Patiño to Francisco de Varas y Valdés, El Pardo, January 4, 1735.

14 Ibid., instructions to Juan and Ulloa, signed by Patiño, dated Aranjuez, April 22, 1735. In the letter cited in the preceding note, Patiño directed Varas y Valdés to draw up these instructions.

15 Their commissions were enclosed in the letter cited above, note 13, with instructions that they should be delivered to Juan and Ulloa at the moment of their embarkation for America.

16 This was done in accordance with the order contained in Patiño's letter cited above, note 13.

17 The best French account of the expedition is Charles de la Condamine's Journal du voyage fait par l'ordre du Roi à l'Equateur (Paris, 1751). Another, written by Pierre Bouguer, is given in abridged form in Pinkerton's Voyages, XIV.270‑312. The account written by Juan and Ulloa is discussed below in the text.

18 La Condamine, p5, makes a complimentary reference to Juan and Ulloa's "connoissances et . . . mérite personnel". On February 17, 1737, during Juan and Ulloa's controversy with President Araujo y Río, Bouguer wrote and signed a testimonial letter in which he said: "[Juan et Ulloa] ont non seulement assisté à tout ce que nous avons fait depuis que nous sommes entrés sur les terres de sa Majesté Catholique, mais ont même bien voulu partager avec nous toute la peine et tout le travail qui ne peuvent pas manquer d'être attachés à ces sortes d'opérations. Ils y ont donnésº tout leur temps, ils nous ont aidés de leurs lumières, et ils ont apportésº toute la vivacité possible pour faire réussir notre entreprise. Je dois certifier outre cela que lorsque j'ay mesuré avec Mr. de la Condamine dans la pleineº de Yaruqui, la base qui doit servir de fondement à nos opérations trigonométriques, Mr. de Ulloa a non seulement agi avec ce zéle que je lui ai vu dans toutes les autres rencontres; mais que j'ay continuellement éprouvé, combien la présence d'un officier de la part de Sa Majesté Catholique étoit nécessaire pour l'expedition de l'ouvrage, et pour applanir les diverses difficultés qui se présentent" (AGI, Audiencia de Quito, leg. 133).

19 The present summary account of the controversy is based on the voluminous "Expediente sobre las Quexas que dio el Presste de Quito D Joseph Araujo y Río, de averle pedido el respecto d Anto de Ulloa, y d Jorge Juan . . ." AGI, Audiencia de Quito, leg. 133. The Voyage to South America makes a very brief and non-committal reference to the affair (second edition, I.183).

20 It is true that in 1747 Araujo y Río, who had returned to Spain, succeeded in getting the Consejo de Indias to vindicate him and to punish not only his principal accusers but also the special judge (pesquisidor) appointed by the king to investigate the charges. But these charges were so numerous and circumstantial and were supported by so many respectable people that it is almost impossible to believe that he was not guilty. The progress of the case is summarised in consultas of the Consejo de Indias dated February 18 and 23 and December 16, 1741 (AGI, Audiencia de Quito, leg. 104) and July 12, 1747 (ibid., leg. 105); and the expediente cited above, note 19, contains many references to it.

21 His despatches are contained in the expediente cited above, note 19.

22 AGI, Audiencia de Quito, leg. 104, consulta of the Consejo de Indias dated March 24, 1738, with the king's decision endorsed on the cover. Under this is a note, "Pub[lica]da en 5 de Junio de 1739, y expídanse las ordenes correspondientes".

23 See the preceding note.

24 Speaking of their preparations for departure from Callao in 1744, Ulloa says: "The viceroy had given us leave to return [to Spain] with the greatest marks of esteem" (A Voyage to South America, II.230).

25 La Condamine, p212.

26 Juan and Ulloa, A Voyage to South America, II.282.

27 Ibid., p269.

28 Ibid., pp314‑319. Among Ulloa's friends were William Watson and Martin Folkes, president of the Royal Society. Folkes communicated an abstract of Ulloa's papers to the Society (Philosophical Transactions . . . Abridged, IX (London, 1809), 316, note; see also below, note 30). P. H. Maty, General Index to the Philosophical Transactions (London, 1787), p776, credits Ulloa with three contributions — observations on two solar eclipses, 1748 and 1778, and an earthquake at Cadiz, 1755.

29 Archivo General de Simancas, Marina, leg. 712, "Exp[edien]te s[ob]re las obras de dn Jorge Juan, y dn Anto de Ulloa," slip of paper stating that their commissions as capitanes de fragatas were issued on July 20, 1746.

30 Ibid., representation by Antonio de Ulloa, Madrid, August 2, 1746, reviewing the work that he and Juan had done in Peru and enclosing a "Memoria de los Asumptos que contienen los Papeles de las Observaciones" etc.; ibid., a similar representation by Juan. Ulloa's statement that he threw his manuscript overboard at the time of his capture by the British casts serious doubt on Antonio Ballesteros y Beretta's explanation of the publication in London of Juan and Ulloa's Noticias secretas (1826). As I understand the passage (Historia de España, VI.343), Ballesteros suggests that the manuscript of the Noticias secretas was among the papers taken from Ulloa by the British; that before the papers were restored to Ulloa in London, the British government had that manuscript copied, and kept the copy; and that the book published in London in 1826 was made from this copy. There are several reasons why it is impossible to accept this explanation. (1) We have Ulloa's statement that he threw all his manuscript overboard (so that all the British got was his notes). (2) Ulloa's statement (which is also made in his Voyage to South America, II.270) on this point is fully corroborated by a letter written in 1746 by Martin Folkes, president of the Royal Society of London, and addressed to the Earl of Sandwich, first lord of the admiralty. Folkes, who had been commissioned to examine Ulloa's papers, reported in this letter that he had done so, and that they contained nothing whatever of interest to the general public and that they would scarcely be useful even to the learned world until Ulloa had organized his "original memoranda" scattered through rough drafts and loose notes" (Spanish translation of Folkes's letter in Juan Sempere y Guarinos, Ensayo de una Biblioteca Española de los Mejores Escritores del Reynado de Carlos III, Madrid, 1789, VI.160‑162). (3) Folkes's letter also states precisely what information he took (that is, copied) from Ulloa's papers, and that information was of a purely technical character, such as the latitude of several cities in South America, etc. (see above, note 28.) (4) In the letter cited below, note 44, Ulloa stated that he wrote the confidential report (from which the Noticias secretas was later printed) in 1748 or 1749, that is, long after his release by the British and his return to Spain. (5) If, in the face of all this evidence, we admit that the British government did get a copy of the manuscript of the Noticias secretas in 1746, there still remains the almost insuperable difficulty of explaining why eighty years were permitted to elapse before the manuscript was published.

31 These are the dates of the reports made by the readers to whom these several sections of the work were first submitted, so it is obvious that the sections were completed some time — probably several weeks at least — prior to these dates. The reports in question are contained in the expediente cited above, note 29.

32 Expediente cited above, note 29.

33 This information is contained in papers in the expediente cited above, note 29.

34 This is made unmistakably clear not only by the text of the book but also by the reports of the censors to whom it was submitted.

35 Burriel's report of June 29, 1747, and the Marqués de la Regalía's report of June 13, 1748 (both in the expediente cited above, note 29). It is difficult for a layman to follow the reasoning of the inquisitor general, who, in discussing Juan's volume, said that he found nothing wrong with it, "antes bien dexa muy dignamente expressada la condenacion del sistema de Copernico aunque entre los Mathematicos Catholicos se haya propuesto como Hipotesi, por explicar con tal movimiento, que confiesan fingido, los del orbe del Cielo, y sus astros" (ibid., report dated Madrid, April 10, 1747).

36 The Marqués de la Regalía emphasised this consideration in his report of September 13, 1747, condemning "aquella supersticiosa politica con que, à exemplo de los Romanos en las primeras centurias de su Republica, ocultabamos a los Extrangeros nuestra situacion, Govierno y Presidios; el tiempo la ha hecho vana y ridicula en las Yndias" (ibid.).

37 Ibid., carpeta containing the replies of the Spanish intendants to an inquiry from the Marqués de la Ensenada in regard to the sale of the book; Ignacio de Luzan to the Marqués de la Ensenada, Paris, September 12, 1748. For letters from London and Bologna praising the book, see Sempere, VI.163‑167.

38 These translations and editions are those listed in the catalogue of the British Museum. There may have been other editions; there were certainly other printings — for instance the Dublin printing of the second edition, which is the one referred to in the present article. According to Joseph Sabin, A Dictionary of Books Relating to America, IX (New York, 1877), 360, Adams was the translator of the first three English editions, but not of the fourth and fifth. Sabin himself erroneously attributes Ulloa's Noticias Americanas to Jorge Juan (ibid., pp358‑359).

39 Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid, Sección de Manuscritos, no. 3072, bound vol., MS., 343 folios numbered in pencil. On the fly-leaf is the endorsement, "Se compró en 22 de Marzo de 1864"; on the back of the title-page another endorsement, "Me lo regaló Joaqn de Aguirre. Senrra [rubric]." See Julián Paz, Catálogo de Manuscritos de América existentes en la Biblioteca Nacional (Madrid, 1933), no. 1,295, p595.

40 In 1918, the 1826 edition was reprinted as vols. 31 and 32 of the Biblioteca Ayacucho. So far as the present writer is aware, no one has ever explained precisely how or when Barry obtained a copy of the confidential report or why he published it at London in Spanish in 1826 (see note 30, above). Some interesting information which furnishes ground for a partial and conjectural answer to these questions is contained in the long notice of the Noticias secretas published in the London Quarterly Review in March, 1827 (XXXV.321‑351). In the first place, the reviewer says that Barry, a Roman Catholic, was educated in Spain, spent a large part of his life there, and "at an earlier period of life" travelled extensively in the Spanish colonies; that he was "the person chosen to conduct one of the greatest of recent schemes for applying English capital to the improvement of the new [Spanish American] states"; and that "in this capacity he made a tour which lasted nearly three years, and embraced almost every district of Spanish America. . . ." The reviewer then gives us the significant information that Barry returned from this recent tour completely disillusioned and convinced that, "until the governments are more settled than they now are, and the people more unlike their fathers," any effort to push British investments in Spanish America "must be attended with ruinous consequences". The reviewer implies quite definitely that he obtained this information from Barry himself (loc. cit., pp350‑351). In the second place, this same article reviews the first two volumes of Navarrete's Colección de los viages . . ., published in Madrid in 1825 at government expense. The point emphasized by the reviewer is Navarrete's attempt to defend Spain's treatment of the Indians and to pave the way for a reconciliation between Spain and its former colonies.

Barry would probably not have published the Noticias if he had not failed so utterly in his tour that he had no hope of better success for a long time to come, for the book was certainly not good propaganda for the kind of scheme in which he had until very recently been concerned. The information that it contained was not of a kind to create confidence on the part of British investors in the Spanish American people, nor would the association of Barry's name with so scathing a criticism of those people be likely to help him in his business dealings with them. After the collapse of his Spanish American scheme, these considerations no longer had any weight with him, and no reason remained why he should not publish the confidential report of Juan and Ulloa. The motive for publishing it may well have been furnished by the publication of Navarrete's Viages. This book, which defended the Spanish colonial régime, appeared in 1825; Barry's Noticias secretas, which attacked the Spanish colonial régime, appeared in 1826; and both were reviewed together by Barry's friend in the Quarterly Review. Whether Barry was moved by a desire to serve the cause of truth, or whether he merely wished to vent his spleen against the Spanish Americans, who were responsible for the failure of his great business undertaking, or whether he had some other motive, we can not say. The writer in the Quarterly Review said that Barry was planning to publish an English translation of the Noticias secretas. It does not appear that he ever did so. Barry states in his prólogo to the Noticias that he obtained the manuscript in 1823 after his return from his three-year tour of South America; but he does not say how he obtained it and his account of that tour differs in some respects from the one given by the writer of the review.

41 Ballesteros, Historia de España, VI.342; Cervera, op. cit., pp240 ff. Speaking of Spanish colonial history, Altamira says that even for the eighteenth century "son textos calificados como de primera importancia muchos que son historiografía ó cosa de muy análoga condición, como las Noticias secretas atribuidas á Jorge Juan y Ulloa, y respecto de las quales la primera cuestión que debería ser planteada es la de su autenticidad" (Congreso de Historia y Geografía Hispano-Americano Celebrado en Sevilla en Abril de 1914: Actas y Memorias, Madrid, 1914, p186). A footnote to this passage refers to Altamira's paper, "Some Aspects of Spanish Colonial History", which was read at the International Congress of Historical Sciences, London, April, 1913; but I have not been able to find a copy of this paper.

42 The following are the most important differences: (1) The Noticias secretas contains an apéndice that is not part of the original manuscript; but not only is this fact obvious to any reader — Barry himself calls attention to it and explains why he made the addition. (2) The original manuscript is divided into twelve sesiones;º the Noticias secretas is divided into two parts of nine chapters each, and the subdivisions of the manuscript are presented in somewhat different order. To be precise, Part I of the Noticias consists of secciones 1‑3 of the manuscript, sección 1 becoming chs. 1‑7; sección 2, ch. 8; and sección 3, ch. 9. Part II consists of secciones 4‑12 in order, except that secciones 5, 6, and 7 become respectively chs. 4, 2, and 3. Otherwise no changes were made in the body of the account. No secciones were omitted, and no chapters were added. (3) The Noticias secretas does, however, omit the four-page prólogo contained in the original manuscript. More than this, the prólogo with which Barry prefaced the Noticias does contain one statement that — at least by obvious implication — distorts the character and purpose of the confidential report made by Juan and Ulloa. After praising them for exposing the grave abuses prevalent in Spanish America, Barry says: "Pero considerando el Gobierno español que los abusos referidos eran enormes, y que su publicación sería injuriosa al Estado y denigrativa á la nación, determinó quedase este informe encerrado en los archivos. . . ." The obvious implication is that Juan and Ulloa intended their report for publication; but note the words of the prólogo written by Juan and Ulloa and omitted by Barry: "Estas materias reservadas son las que contiene la presente Obra . . . con la prevencion de haver de quedar su noticia para el solo fin que va expresado, deviendose temer de lo contrario sucediesen con su divulgazion los daños que con las representaziones del Obispo de Chiapa [Bartolomé de las Casas], que tanto descredito han causado para con los Extranjeros al Comun de toda la Nacion Española quando los excesos inevitables en los subditos, y mas quando estan distantes de sus Principes, los hazen y creen generales, y caracteristicos a todos los demas. . . ."

43 It should be stated that my opinion that the manuscript preserved in the Biblioteca Nacional resembles, in both paper and handwriting, certain letters unquestionably written by Ulloa, is based upon my examination of the documents, but that it would obviously require the services of an expert in such matters to settle the question.

44 AGI, Audiencia de Lima, leg. 775, Ulloa to Arriaga, Huancavélica, August 15, 1762, autograph, not numbered.

44a It is a curious fact that although Barry's prólogo to the Noticias secretas speaks of both Juan and Ulloa as the authors of it, the person who reviewed the book for the Quarterly Review (see above, note 40) stated explicitly that Ulloa wrote "the whole of these Noticias (loc. cit., p321, note).

45 The draft of the passport and the Instrucción reservada are in Archivo General de Simancas, Marina, leg. 712, expediente on Ulloa's mission to Paris, etc., 1749‑1751. Before he left for Paris, Ulloa, in collaboration with Juan, wrote a treatise (which was published in 1749) on the boundary between the dominions of Spain and Portugal in South America.

46 The information in this paragraph is taken from Ulloa's correspondence and reports contained in the expediente cited in the preceding note.

47 Prior to 1742, shipments of quicksilver from Huancavélica were also made to Mexico, but the cost was so excessive that in that year the king ordered that no more shipments of this kind should be made. Quicksilver mined at Almadén, Spain, was delivered at Vera Cruz at a net cost of 20 pesos a quintal (it was sold there for 82 pesos a quintal); whereas quicksilver mined at Huancavélica cost the crown 58 pesos a quintal at that place, and there was then the cost of transportation to Mexico (AGI, Audiencia de Lima, leg. 442, the Marqués de la Regalía and Joseph Cornejo to Joseph de Campillo, Madrid, June 10, 1742; ibid., Joseph Cornejo to Patiño, San Ildefonso, August 27, 1734).

48 For many years before Ulloa's appointment, the court had been making determined but unavailing efforts to reform the many flagrant abuses in the system prevailing at Huancavélica. Jerónimo de Sola y Fuente was its principal agent for this purpose. In 1745, after a long investigation on the spot, he entered into a new contract with the miners on behalf of the crown (printed copy in AGI, Audiencia de Lima, leg. 818); but, as instructed, he left the existing system, which was radically defective, untouched in its main outlines and merely tried to correct it in certain details. This contract was still in force during Ulloa's administration, and he therefore had to deal with long-standing evils arising out of a vicious system that both the local officials and the court had been either unwilling or unable to reform. In 1754 and 1755, shortly befor Ulloa's arrival, production at Huancavélica fell off so sharply that Peru suffered from a severe shortage of quicksilver.

49 See below, note 51.

50 AGI, Audiencia de Lima, leg. 775, folder labeled "Guancavélica, Año de 1757," Arriaga's representation, undated, beginning, "Señor. Ha dos años. . . ." It contains the endorsement, "El Rey le confiere a Dn Antonio de Ulloa."

51 Ibid., Ulloa to Arriaga, Cadiz, July 27, 1757. In both this and another letter to Arriaga dated July 11, 1757 (ibid.), Ulloa speaks of learning through Jorge Juan of the intentions of the court regarding his appointment.

52 Ulloa's letter of July 27, cited in the preceding note, states that he "knew" Huancavélica during the administration of Jerónimo de Sola; but it appears that he did not visit the place in person (Juan and Ulloa, A Voyage to South America, II.93). Before he sailed, Ulloa was given additional reason to apprehend trouble in Huancavélica. Toward the end of September, 1757, the daughter and son-in‑law of former Governor Leyba of Huancavélica, who had recently died there, arrived at Cadiz from Peru and gave him a first-hand account of the disorders prevalent there. The insubordinate miners had openly resisted Leyba's efforts at reform and, it was charged, had even tried to murder the visitador whom they thought responsible for Leyba's efforts (AGI, Audiencia de Lima, leg. 1326, Ulloa to Arriaga, Cadiz, September 26, 1757).

53 Ulloa's salary of 2400 escudos at Cadiz (letter of July 27, 1757, cited above, note 51) was equivalent to 4800 pesos.

54 Fernández Duro, VI.393, shows that the scribblers of the victorious faction attacked Juan and Ulloa along with their fallen patron.

55 He first expected to sail late in September, 1757. The court was at least partly responsible for the delay, since, when it sent him his commission, it forgot to enclose his sailing permit (AGI, Audiencia de Lima, leg. 775, Ulloa to Arriaga, Cadiz, August 3, 1757, and September 7, 1757, two letters). Before his departure, and in order to impress the creoles of Peru, he received investiture as Comendador de Ocaña in the Order of Santiago. Offered the honor some time since, he had postponed the ceremony because of the expense involved.

56 Ibid., Ulloa to Arriaga, Huancavélica, November 15, 1758.

57 The information in this paragraph is taken from letters too numerous to cite. Most of Ulloa's are in AGI, Audiencia de Lima, legs. 775, 818, 842, 843, and 1326. The other side of the story, as told by the miners, the fiscal, and the viceroy, is principally in ibid., legs. 639, 775, 835, and 846.

58 Ibid., leg. 775, Ulloa to Arriaga, Huancavélica, May 14, 1762, no. 56.

59 Letter cited above, note 44.

60 AGI, Audiencia de Lima, leg. 842, expediente no. 106, Ulloa to the king, Huancavélica, September 30, 1761; Ulloa to Arriaga, Lima, March 15, 1762; leg. 843, Ulloa to the king, Huancavélica, March 20, 1764; Ulloa to Arriaga, Havana, February 28, 1745.

61 AGI, Indiferente General, leg. 1631, draft of an informe by Jorge Juan, dated July 18, 1763.

62 AGI, Audiencia de Lima, leg. 775, Ulloa to Arriaga, Huancavélica, July 13, 1764, acknowledging receipt of the royal order.

63 Ibid., leg. 843, Ulloa to Arriaga, Bellavista, October 10, and October 25, 1764, two letters; and Viceroy Amat to Arriaga, Lima, October 24 and November 13, 1764, two letters.

64 The case against Ulloa was still pending in 1772. I am unable to state when or how it was settled. It was very complicated and the Consejo de Indias regarded it as highly important since it involved both the superintendence of the mine and the handling of large sums of money. The long delay in its settlement was apparently owing to two reasons. There was, first, the question of procedure — should certain charges against Ulloa be tried in the ordinary courts of justice, or should the whole case be tried by the juez de residencia? The latter alternative was finally chosen. Then arose the difficulty of finding a suitable person to conduct the residencia. Antonio Porlier was appointed to the post, but he soon resigned — because, said Ulloa, he was an honest man and realised that Viceroy Amat's continued presence in Peru, where he persecuted Ulloa's friends and intimidated his witnesses, made a fair investigation impossible. In 1772, the person appointed to succeed Porlier as juez de residencia excused himself and the commission then devolved upon the consejo's second choice. There my information about the affair ends. (The foregoing information is scattered through legs. 597, 644, 775, 843, and 851 in Audiencia de Lima, AGI).

65 Ibid., leg. 775, Ulloa to Arriaga, February 3, 1765.

66 Ibid., leg. 842, Ulloa to Arriaga, August 20, 1763.

67 Recent discussions of this subject are contained in E. Wilson Lyon, Louisiana in French Diplomacy, 1759‑1804 (Norman, Okla., 1934), John W. Caughey, Bernardo de Gálvez in Louisiana (Berkeley, 1934), and James E. Winston, "The Cause and Results of the Revolution of 1768 in Louisiana," Louisiana Hist. Quarterly, XV.181.

68 A good deal of information about Spain's preparations for taking possession of Louisiana is contained in AGI, Audiencia de Santo Domingo, leg. 2542. Among these documents is a letter (undated, but apparently written about the end of August, 1765) from Grimaldi to Ossun, the French ambassador, explaining the delay in Spain's preparations.

69 On January 23, 1767 (despatch no. 12), Ulloa wrote Captain-General Bucareli of Cuba begging for additional funds to enable him to establish Spanish authority in Louisiana at once, for, he said, "estas gentes [the Louisiana creoles] aun sin motivo se alborotan sedisiosamente: como ya se ha experimentado en varias ocasiones" (AGI, Papeles de Cuba, leg. 1055). In despatch no. 17 to Arriaga, dated March 15, 1767, he repeated the warning and said, "Todo es de recelar, y pide que se tire á contener con tiempo" (ibid.). Similar warnings are already too late, he wrote Grimaldi (July 20, 1768) urging him to hasten the sending of the troops from Spain that were to enable him to establish Spanish authority in Louisiana, concluding his letter with the phrase, "no aviendo ya sufrimiento ni disimulacion para sobrellevar los excesos y desordenes, que se experimentan" (ibid., Audiencia de Santo Domingo, leg. 2542).

70 Ibid., Aubry to (the captain general of Cuba), New Orleans, October 16, 1769, French original and Spanish translation.

71 AGI, Audiencia de Santo Domingo, leg. 2542, Ulloa to Grimaldi, Havana, December 10, 1768, copy. Ulloa's account of the uprising at New Orleans is contained in a 34‑page letter to Grimaldi dated Havana, December 4, 1768 (copy in ibid.).

72 Archivo del Ayuntamiento, Seville, "Autógrafos," Ulloa to the "M. N. y M. Leal Ciudad de Sevilla", dated "Abordo del España á la vela á vista de Cadiz", June 28, 1778. Many of Ulloa's letters to Bucareli, written while he was in Mexico and containing interesting information of a personal character, are in AGI, Indiferente General, leg. 1631. Still interested in mining, he visited Guanajuato, and, apparently forgetting Potosí, he described the mine there as "the richest in the world".

73 Archivo General de Simancas, Marina, leg. 469, expediente on Ulloa's trial by a consejo de Guerra. The trial began on October 12, 1779, and ended on July 10, 1781.

74 The story is told by Hoyos in the pamphlet cited above, note 1; in the article on Ulloa in the Enciclopedia Universal Ilustrada; in Charles Gayarré, History of Louisiana (New York, 1852), II.149; and most recently in John W. Caughey, op. cit., p8, where it is offered as proof that Ulloa was "occasionally the theorist, bungling practicalities". Caughey says Ulloa was engrossed in astronomical observations.

75 It is so confused by A. Curtis Wilgus in The Histories of Hispanic America (Washington, 1932), p32, in a passage that contains other errors as well.

76 The Voyage contains nothing about Louisiana and Florida and only one page about Huancavélica (ed. 1765, II.103, 104); the Noticias Americanas devotes ten pages to Huancavélica (ed. 1792, pp223‑232), and information about Louisiana and Florida is scattered through the book.

77 AGI, Indiferente General, leg. 1656, expediente on Ulloa's application for permission to print the Noticias Americanas.

78 Sempere, VI.173, says an abridged English version also was published, but this is probably an error. Antonio Palau y Dulcet, Manual del Librero Hispano-americano (Barcelona, 1923‑1927), VII.83, lists a German translation published in 1781 and a French translation published in 1787, but no English translation or abridgement. See also Townsend (cited below, note 84), II.441.

79 Archivo General de Simancas, Marina, leg. 715, expediente on Ulloa's request for permission to print the treatise. The expediente contains the manuscript of the treaty together with various relevant documents. The treatise, consisting of 314 folios, is entitled "La Marina. Fuerzas Navales de la Europa y costas de Berveria" etc. It has sometimes been stated, erroneously of course, that the treatise was published.

80 Navarrete, I.201. He was also teniente general de la armada, or vice admiral.

81 A report of his observations of a solar eclipse in 1778 was communicated to the Royal Society of London (see above, note 28), and was also published at Madrid; and in 1795 he published at Madrid his Conversaciones de Ulloa con sus tres hijos en servicio de la Marina, which consists of practical information about navigation, scurvy, etc.

82 Gayarré (cited in the following note) says that Ulloa's wife was wealthy; but this is very doubtful. Townsend (quoted below in the text) found him living in apparently straitened circumstances in 1787; and the expediente cited above, note 79, contains a representation by Ulloa (undated, but written after the beginning of 1774) in which he complains that his salary is inadequate to the needs of his growing family and that he has had to use part of his wife's dowry to maintain his family in decent style.

83 Gayarré (ed. 1852), II.177, 183, 184. Gayarré calls her the Marchioness of Abrado, but I have preferred to follow Navarrete (I.200) and Travieso (loc. cit., V.703) on this point.

84 Joseph Townsend, A Journey through Spain in the Years 1786 and 1787 (London, 1792), II.440‑441. The Dictionary of National Biography has an article on Townsend.

85 Cited above, note 81.

86 Navarrete, I.201.

87 Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo, Estudios de Crítica literaria, Cuarta serie (Madrid, 1907), pp340‑341.

88 Abbé Raynal, Histoire philosophique et politique des éstablissements,º etc. (Geneva, 1781), IV.124. See Manjarrés, cited above, note 2. Sempere, VI.174‑175, gives the best account of Ulloa's scientific activities, and recent writers, including Ballesteros (VI.342), quite properly follow Sempere very closely. See also Antonio Rodríguez Villa, Don Cenón de Somodevilla, Marqués de la Ensenada (Madrid, 1878), pp357‑359.

89 Noticias Americanas (ed. 1792); "Introducción."

90 Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire (nouvelle édition, Paris, 1877‑1885), XVIII.148; XXVII.183. It should be added that the latter passage contains a disparaging comment on two statements made by Ulloa. I have not found any evidence that Ulloa ever met Voltaire. Ulloa's name was still remembered in England more than three-quarters of a century after the publication of the Voyage to South America and thirty years after his death. Reviewing his Noticias secretas in the London Quarterly Review for March, 1827, the writer said, "Every one who has read Ulloa's Voyage — and who is hereº that has not? — will be glad to see another work from his pen. . . ." (XXXV.321).

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