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THE ACCOUNT BY A GENTLEMAN FROM ELVAS Translated and Edited byJames Alexander Robertson With Footnotes and Updates to Robertson's Notes byJohn H. Hann The True Relation of the Hardships Suffered by Governor Hernando de Soto, by a Gentleman of Elvas, was translated from the Portuguese by James Alexander Robertson for the Florida State Historical Society and was published in two volumes for them by the Yale University Press as the society's publication number eleven. The first volume, published in 1932, was a photographic facsimile of the original Portuguese edition of Elvas in IS 57. The second volume, published in 1933, was an English translation of volume one by Dr. Robertson, who was at that time the executive secretary of the Florida State Historical Society. The Robertson translation has stood the test of over fifty years and is still considered to be an excellent translation. Relevant portions of the front material from volume one have been included here to clarify the context of Robertson's work. This is followed by the complete translation from volume two of the Robertson edition, which is reproduced below, followed by Dr. Robertson's notes. In Robertson's notes, native towns and physical features are located according to a route reconstruction on modern maps by Theodore H. Lewis, published in the volume Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States, 1J28-1543 (1907). The decision to rely on Lewis was a rather eclectic one, because Lewis's reconstructions, though interesting, deviated widely from those of nearly all of his predecessors and contemporaries, leading John R. Swanton to call him the "great iconoclast" of De Soto route studies. No effort has been made in the present volume to update these locations, although the reader should be aware that in many, if not most, cases a better estimate might be had. Modern versions of De Soto's route, although they differ from each other, generally make use of ethnographic, linguistic, and archaeological data that were not available to Lewis. References to these more recent attempts may be found in our bibliography. The notes in turn have been updated for this edition by Dr. John Hann, historic sites specialist for the state of Florida, the Bureau of Archaeological Research, under a grant from the Institute for Early Contact Period Studies at the University of Florida in Gainesville. 20 ~ THE DE SOTO CHRONICLES ...

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