Narrative of the Third Voyage of Columbus as Contained in Las Casas’s History
Introduction
The narrative given here of the third voyage of Columbus in which he discovered the mainland of South America is taken from the Historia de las Indias of Las Casas. In preparing his History Las Casas had the use of a larger body of Columbus’s papers than has come down to us. Among these papers was a journal of this third voyage which was incorporated in a condensed form by Las Casas in his History, just as he did in the case of the journals of the first and second voyages. This narrative is found in the second volume of the Historia de las Indias, pp. 220-317. The translation is, as is mentioned in the preface to this volume, that given in John Boyd Thacher’s Christopher Columbus.
In certain places the text differs slightly from that in the printed edition of Las Casas, as Mr. Thacher followed the critical text of Cesare de Lollis prepared for the Raccolta Colombiana by a collation of the manuscript in the Archives at Madrid with the recently discovered autograph manuscript of Las Casas. Mr. Thacher, following Lollis, omitted passages that were obviously comments on the text by Las Casas. These have been supplied either from Mr. Thacher’s notes or translated by the editor from the printed text. The editor has gone over the whole translation and can testify to its exceptional accuracy. A few slight changes have been made in the wording for the sake of greater clearness or exactness.
Columbus described this voyage in a letter to Ferdinand and Isabella. This letter is included in Major’s Select Letters of Columbus and in P. L. Ford’s Writings of Columbus. This letter is of great importance in the study of Columbus’s geographical ideas. Other contemporary accounts of this voyage are contained in Ferdinand Columbus’s Historie, the life of his father, where the journal abridged by Las Casas is still further condensed, in Peter Martyr’s De Rebus Oceanicis, Dec. I., lib. VI., and in the letter of Simone Verde and the three letters of Angelo Trivigiano which will be found in Harrisse, Christophe Colomb, II. 95-98 and 119-123.
E. G. B.