Gay, a French botanist, was commissioned in 1830 by the government of Chile to carry out a thorough scientific survey of the country, and to produce a detailed description of its geography, geology and natural history. To accomplish this, Gay traveled from province to province for 11 years. In 1839 he was persuaded to add political history to the project, but only the section of the work covering the history of Chile up to the time of the discovery and conquest are his work; later, when he became too busy writing the volumes on natural history, the task of writing the political history was handed over to Francisco de Paula Noriega. The five volumes of history covering the discovery to 1810 constitute the first reasonably complete picture of Chilean history written with modern historiographical methodology. The text is divided as follows: Historia, 8 vols.; Documentos, 2 vols.; Agricultura, 2 vols.; Botánica, 8 vols.; and Zoología, 8 vols. (Richard Ramer).