TOO Field Columbian Museum. 



manuscripts are so well preserved as to be easily photog-raphed. His 

 penmanship is firm, clear, and regular, in ])laces even ornamental, 

 altliongh, imder date of December i, 1504, he tells Diego, "My ill- 

 ness prevents me from writing, except at night. In the day my hands 

 have no strength." He was then about sixty years old. 



The greater number of the autographs are the property of the 

 Duke of Veragua, the present head of the Columbus family, who has 

 also the original commission under which the memorable voyage of 

 discovery was made, a number of royal orders concerning the 

 preparations for that voyage, and several autograph letters addressed 

 to Columbus by Ferdinand and Isabella, the sovereigns of vSpain. 



At the request of the Congress of the United States, expressed in 

 a formal resolution, and conveyed to him through President Harrison, 

 Veragua generously loaned the entire collection for exhibition in the 

 Convent of La Rabida at the Woi'ld's Columbian Exposition, and they 

 furnished the most interesting historical exhibit there. 



The letters and memoranda addressed to the sovereigns are in 

 the archives of the Spanish Government. The other papers belong to 

 the Columbian Library at Seville, the Mimicipal Government of 

 Genoa, and to the Duke of Berwick and Alba, who also loaned his 

 collection for exhibition at Chicago. 



There are unsupported statements concerning letters and other 

 autographs of Columbus in the possession of English collectors from 

 fifty to a hundred years ago, but if they ever existed they have disap- 

 peared and no traces can be found of them. 



Columbus was a very voluminous writer. Ninety-seven docu- 

 ments from his pen are known. He may have written many more, 

 for his reputation in this respect was such as to cause the court jester 

 of Charles V. to say that he and Ptolemy, the Egyptian geographer, 

 •'were twins in the art of blotting." Another contemporary, Zuniga, 

 in a letter to the Marquis de Pescara, says: "God grant that Gutier- 

 rez may never come short for paper, for he writes more than Ptolemy, 

 and more than Columbus, who discovered the Indies." Fortunately 

 sixty-four of his compositions are preserved entire. They consist of 

 letters descriptive of his plans, arguments and memoranda to sustain 

 his theories concerning a western passage to the Indies, memorials to 

 the court and appeals for justice, narratives of his voyage and per- 

 sonal correspondence. Some of his letters have never been printed. 

 Several had never been translated into English tlntilthe preparation 

 of this Monograph , and it may be a source of consolation to disappointed 

 literary aspirants to know that a manuscript book by so eminent a man 

 as he who discovered America has been awaiting a publisher for 

 nearly four hundred years. 



