Juan Lopez de Velasco, Descripcion universal de las Indias (1571-1574)

The first attempt to describe every part of the Spanish Indies in one book, compiled by the cosmographer-chronicler of the Council of the Indies between 1571 and 1574 and left in manuscript for three hundred years. It counts towns, households, encomenderos and tributary Indians; it fixes the longitude of Mexico from a lunar eclipse; and it rejects Atlantis and the ten tribes to argue that the New World must join the Old somewhere in the north.