YBARRA ] LETTER OF DR. DIEGO ALVAREZ CHANCA 431 
Here follows the letter : 
“Since the occurrences which I relate in private letters to other 
persons are not of such general interest as those which are contained 
in this epistle, I have resolved to give you a complete narrative of 
the events of our voyage, as well as to treat of the other matters 
which form the subject of my petition to you. 
“The expedition which their Catholic Majesties sent, by divine 
permission, from Spain to the Indies under the command of Christo- 
pher Columbus, admiral of the ocean, left Cadiz on the- 25th. day 
of September, in the year 1493, with wind and weather favorable 
for the voyage. This wind lasted two days, during which time we 
managed to make nearly fifty leagues. The weather then chang- 
ing, we made little or no progress for the next two days; it pleased 
God, however, after this, to restore us fine weather, so that in two 
days more we reached the island of Great Canary. Here we put 
into harbor, which we were obliged to do to repair one of the ships 
that made a great deal of water. We remained all that day, and 
on the following set sail again, but were several times becalmed, 
so that four or five days more passed before we reached the island 
of Gomera. We had to remain at Gomera one day to lay in our 
stores of meat, wood, and as much water to drink as we could stow, 
preparatory for the long voyage that we expected to make without 
seeing land.t Thus it happened that through the delay at these 
two ports, and being calmed the day after leaving Gomera, we 
spent nineteen or twenty days before we arrived at the island of 
Ferro.” After this we had, by the goodness of God, a return to 
fine weather, more continuous than any fleet ever enjoyed during 
so long a voyage; so that leaving Ferro on the thirteenth day of 
October, within twenty days we came in sight of land, but we should 
have seen it in fourteen or fifteen days if the ship Capitana® 
*From the island of Gomera Columbus embarked eight pigs, bulls, cows 
and calves, sheep and goats, fowls and pigeons, seeds of oranges, lemons, 
bergamots, citrons, pomegranates, dates, grapes, olives, melons, and other 
European fruits, as well as all kinds of orchard and garden vegetables. 
All these things were the origin of their species in the New World. The 
expedition likewise carried twenty horses belonging to twenty soldiers armed 
with lances, shipped before leaving Cadiz, besides stores of all kinds, including 
medical and surgical supplies, and implements of husbandry, from Spain. 
*The southwesternmost of the group of the Canary Islands, and named 
Hierro in Spanish. Formerly this group was called the Fortunate Islands. 
A galleon (known in Spain as a nao, like the Santa Maria of the first 
voyage) of four hundred tons burden, that carried the Admiral’s flag, and 
in which the writer of this historical document made the trip. Columbus’s 
younger brother Diego, and three old comrades of his first voyage to Amer- 
ica, were also on board this vessel. 
