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Updated: September 26, 2025
He which brought most certaine newes of the countrey and people of Baccalaos, saith Gomara, was Sebastian Cabote a Venetian, which rigged vp two ships at the cost of K. Henry the 7. of England, hauing great desire to traffique for the spices as the Portingalls did.
"It is true," said Gomara, "that mountains obstruct these passes, but if there are mountains there are also hands; let but the resolve be made, there will be no want of means; the Indies, to which the passage will be made, will supply them. To a king of Spain, with the wealth of the Indies at his command, when the object to be obtained is the spice trade, what is possible is easy.
We certainly were bad Christians indeed, if, according to the account of Gomara, GOD sent one of his holy apostles to fight at our head, and we ungratefully neglected to give thanks for so great a mercy: But, till I read the chronicle of Gomara, I never heard of this miracle, neither was it ever mentioned by any of the conquerors who were present in the battle.
Acosta notices the circumstance slightly in his Natural and Moral History of the Indies, published in 1591, and takes it evidently from Gomara. Mariana, in his history of Spain, published in 1592, also mentions it, but expresses a doubt of its truth, and derives his information manifestly from Gomara. Herrera, who published his history of the Indies in 1601, takes no notice of the story.
They never heard of him as a discoverer, real or pretended, of new countries, until long afterwards. The Verrazzano letter had not been published when Peter Martyr, Oviedo and Gomara wrote; and when Martyr and Gomara make mention of him, they do so only by the title by which he was designated by the Spanish sailors. There is no room, however; to doubt its entire correctness.
Clavigero, History of Mexico, translated by C. Cullen, I. xiii. I, BERNAL DIAZ DEL CASTILLO, regidor of the loyal city of Guatemala, while composing this most true history of the conquest of Mexico, happened to see a work by Francisco Lopez de Gomara on the same subject, the elegance of which made me ashamed of the vulgarity of my own, and caused me to throw away my pen in despair.
Alaric and Atilla, those great conquerors, did not slay such numbers of their enemies as Gomara pretends we did in New Spain. He alleges that we burned many cities and temples, forgetting that any of us, the true conquerors, were still alive to contradict his assertions.
Gomara relates that in this battle, previous to the arrival of Cortes with the cavalry, one of the holy apostles, either St Jago or Peter, appeared on a dapple-grey horse under the semblance of Francisco de Morla.
I do not mean by this that we felt inclined to swallow the monstrous exaggerations of Solis and Gomara and other Spanish chroniclers, who seemed to think that it was as easy to say a thousand as a hundred, and that it sounded much better.
I doubt much whether the custom of blackening the teeth was originally suggested, as Gomara supposed, by absurd notions of beauty, or was practised with the view of preventing the toothache. * This disorder is, however, almost unknown to the Indians; and the whites suffer seldom from it in the Spanish colonies, at least in the warm regions, where the temperature is so uniform.
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