Select Letters of Christopher Columbus: With Other Original Documents, Relating to His Four Voyages

by Christopher Columbus

Overview

Five letters by Columbus describing his first, third, and fourth voyages; another by Dr Chanca, physician, descriptive of the second voyage; and an extract from the will of Diego Mendez, one of Columbus's officers on the fourth voyage.-Print ed.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781805231578
Publisher:	Braunfell Books
Publication date:	03/30/2023
Sold by:	Bookwire
Format:	eBook
Pages:	311
File size:	3 MB

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EDITOR'S PREFACE. Should the reader of the following highly interesting letters meet with some passages deficient in that ease of expression, or that connectedness of construction to which his ear and his taste are accustomed, he is requested to bear in mind that the originals are the compositions of men, who, though intelligent observers of the facts they describe, and strongly actuated by the feelings to which they give expression, were yet far from being accomplished masters of the use of the pen. The Spanish scholar will readily perceive that the inaccuracies of the original, both in spelling and grammar, the frequent use of obsolete words, and the disjointed character of the sentences, must have rendered it a matter of no inconsiderable difficulty to avoid a certain harshness of style, in the endeavour to give a correct version of the author's meaning. In the execution of his task, however, the Editor has 107J62 never hesitated to sacrifice ease to accuracy, where the two were incompatible with each other. Since writing the following introduction to these letters, the Editor has seen those passages in Kosmos which refer to Columbus and to the antecedent voyages to the New World, and is happy to find the remarks of the illustrious Humboldt in this latter work in no way contradictory to the statements in the Géographic du nouveau Continent, to which the Editor has been indebted in the progress of the following pages. R. H. M. chapter{Section 4INTRODUCTION. In introducing these letters for the first time to the English reader, it will perhaps be necessary to forewarn him that he is not to expect to find in them a detailed history of all the events that occurred in the fourimportant voyages to which they refer. The inducement to translate them has been...