Altho these matters are very wonderful and unheard of, they would have been much more so if the ships to a reasonable amount had been furnished me.  But what has been accomplished is great and wonderful, and not at all proportionate to my deserts, but to the sacred Christian faith, and to the piety and religion of our sovereigns.  For what the mind of man could not compass, the spirit of God has granted to mortals.  For God is wont to listen to his servants who love his precepts, even in impossibilities, as has happened to me in the present instance, who have accomplished what human strength has hitherto never attained.  For, if any one has written or told anything about these islands, all have done so either obscurely or by guesswork, so that it has almost seemed to be fabulous.

Therefore let king and queen and princes, and their most fortunate realms, and all other Christian provinces, let us all return thanks to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who has bestowed so great a victory and reward upon us; let there be processions and solemn sacrifices prepared; let the churches be decked with festal boughs; let Christ rejoice upon earth as he rejoices in heaven, as He foresees that so many souls of so many people heretofore lost are to be saved; and let us be glad not only for the exaltation of our faith, but also for the increase of temporal prosperity, in which not only Spain, but all Christendom is about to share.

As these things have been accomplished, so have they been briefly narrated.  Farewell.

[1] The first letter of Columbus, descriptive of his first voyage, was written in February, 1498, when he was off the Azores, on his return home.  It was addrest to Louis de Santangel, the treasurer of King Ferdinand of Spain.  Altho addrest to the treasurer, it was intended for the eyes of the King himself, and for those of his queen, Isabella.  The letter was first printed in Barcelona, soon after the arrival of Columbus.  Another account, substantially the same, was written by Columbus in Lisbon in March of the same year, an—­at once translated into Latin and published in Rome in several editions, one being that of Stephen Plannck, of which five copies only are now known to be extant.  Of this Plannck edition a translation from the Latin into English made by Henry W. Haynes has been published by the New York Public Library.  From this translation the passage here given is taken.

[2] The identity of the island on which Columbus made his first landing was formerly much in controversy.  The best opinion now inclines to accept the conclusions reached by Captain Beecher of the British Navy some fifty years ago, that the landing was made on what is known as Watling’s Island, one of the Bahamas.  This island is about thirteen miles long, north and south, and six wide, and is made up of coral, shell and other marine debris.  A monument was erected on it by a Chicago newspaper in 1892, with this inscription: