plan, originated in 1789, for the establishment of a nautical library and repository of manuscripts relative to the marine, at Cadiz. Señor Navarrete then received a commission from Charles the Fourth to explore the archives and libraries of the kingdom, both public and private, for the purpose of collecting exact and authentic copies of whatever should be deemed suitable for the abovementioned object. His researches began at Madrid, in the royal library, the archives of the noble houses of Santa Cruz, Villafranca, Medina Sidonia, and Infantado, and the libraries of St Isidore, and the Escurial. Afterwards he extended his inquiries to other places, particularly to the various public registries in Seville, and the famous archives of Simancas, so jealously closed against the industry of Robertson, and where Muñoz found the most valuable and abundant materials for his unfinished history of the New World. He was very successful, too, in the discovery of letters and other documents concerning Columbus, many of them in his own handwriting, preserved in the archives of his descendant and family representative, the duke of Veragua. These investigations were frequently interrupted, either by reason of the official duties of Señor Navarrete, or still more in consequence of the protracted civil and foreign wars by which his illfated country has been so cruelly agitated. He resumed his labors, however, from time to time, as circumstances would permit, and, during the prosecution of his original design, was induced by the great historical value of the documents he collected, to undertake the present publication. In respect to the order of arrangement in his compilation, Señor Navarrete has pursued a very natural and proper course. Columbus being the first navigator into the waters of the West, and having discovered the New World, and thus given impulse, direction, and dignity to the maritime enterprises of the Spaniards, his voyages and the documents relating to his personal fortunes, his family, and the primitive establishments in America, justly occupy the first place in this great national work. Following the order of discovery, the third volume is to comprise the early voyages to the Spanish Main and to Florida, the fourth the conquests of Cortez, and the rest, in succession, the expedition to the river of La Plata, and the straits of Magellan, to Chile, Peru, and California, to the South sea and the Asiatic islands. Of the competency of the editor to pursue the laborious track thus marked out, the volumes already printed fur nish ample evidence, in the wise selection of subsidiary documents, the judicious disposition of his matter, the utility and erudition of the notes and other illustrations, and the general propriety of the introductory account of the origin, nature, and value of the compilation. It would be a poor compliment to the discernment of our readers, to enter into any discussion of the general value of publications of this description. Suffice it to say, that all the authenticity of history depends upon such documents. Writings of finished elegance, and composed expressly for popular perusal, are more inviting, undoubtedly, to a large class of readers, and, it may be, more immediately and universally profitable in the diffusion of knowledge; but original narratives or other writings, however repulsive to some by reason of their antiquated, rude, or unpolished style, are the only genuine sources of historical truth. And independently of this consideration, we freely confess, that, in our estimation, no elaborate beauty of composition, as applied to the description of events, is so enchanting as the native and racy simplicity of style, the businesslike directness, force, and truth, with which Xenophon and Cæsar, Sully and Clarendon, Columbus, Vespucci, and Cortez, and our own Winthrop, relate the important affairs wherein they were eye-witnesses, active participators, or the leading and controlling principals. We speak not of the ordinary tattling memoirs of ordinary persons, the chronicles of the first person singular, of no use but to minister gratification to the morbid appetite for private scandal which too widely prevails, and so rudely pushes itself, with coarse and reckless curiosity, into the sanctuary of private life. But we have in view those compositions in which great men have narrated the great events of their time. For those, therefore, who duly prize such writings, and who postpone the incidental ornaments of history to its rich substance, the glitter to the gold, the publication before us possesses a charm superior to any factitious allurements. The longest document contained in this collection is a minute and careful account of the Admiral's first voyage, which is a literary curiosity of great intrinsic interest. It is in the form of a journal of the transactions and observations of each day, abridged from the original written by Columbus himself, and introduced by an explanatory prologue addressed to Ferdinand and Isabella. Señor Navarrete accidentally discovered this invaluable manuscript, while searching for another purpose in the archives of the duke del Infantado. It is throughout in the handwriting of the celebrated Bartolomé de las Casas, who possessed many papers written by Columbus, which he made use of in the composition of his unpublished Historia de las Indias, and who unquestionably abstracted this journal from the Admiral's log-book, giving a literal copy of the most important passages. Not the slightest doubt of its authenticity can exist. Indeed Las Casas inserted an abridgment of it in his manuscript history, which served as the basis of the works of Herrera and other standard historians of the New World. The introduction to the journal exhibits in the very words of Columbus, the views and feelings with which he set sail upon this memorable voyage. We translate it word for word, leaving the original arrangement of the sentences untouched, because it would be difficult to break them without taking serious liberties with the text. 'In nomine D. N. Jesu Christi.-Whereas, most christian, most high, most excellent, and most powerful princes, our lords, king and queen of the Spains and the isles of the sea, this present year 1492, after your Highnesses had ended the war against the Moors who reigned in Europe, and had finished the war in the great city of Granada, where this present year on the second day of January I saw the royal banners of your Highnesses planted by force of arms on the towers of Alhambra, which is the fortress of the said city, and saw the Moorish king come out of the gates of the city and kiss the royal hands of your Highnesses and of my lord the Prince; and then in that same month by the information which I had given your Highnesses of the lands of India, and of a Prince called Gran Can, which signifies in our language King of Kings, how he and his predecessors had often sent to Rome to solicit teachers of our holy faith to instruct him in it, and the holy father had never provided him any, and thus many people were lost by believing in idolatries, and harboring doctrines of perdition;-your Highnesses, as catholic christians, and Princes, who are lovers of the holy christian faith and promoters of it, and enemies of the sect of Mahomet, and of all idolatries and heresies, thought to send me, Christopher Columbus, to said regions of India, to see the said princes, and the people and country, and the disposition of them and of the whole, and the course to be adopted for their conversion to our holy faith; and ordained that I should not proceed by land to the East, as it hath been customary to go, but by way of the West, in which direction we have to this day no certain evidence that any person has passed. So after having expelled all the Jews from your kingdoms and seignories, in the same month of January, your Highnesses commanded me to proceed to those regions of India with a sufficient armament; and for this granted me great favors, and ennobled me so that thenceforth in time to come I might style myself Don, and should be high admiral of the ocean, and viceroy and perpetual governor of all the islands and mainland which I should discover and acquire, and which should thereafter be discovered and acquired in the ocean, and so my oldest son should succeed me, and from degree to degree for ever; and I left the city of Granada the 12th day of the month of May of the same year 1492 on Saturday : I went to the town of Palos, a seaport, where I equipped three vessels very suitable for such a purpose; and departed from the said port, well supplied with much provisions and many seamen, the third day of the month of August of the said year on Friday, half an hour before sunrise, and steered for the Canary islands of your Highnesses, which are in the said ocean, thence to take my departure, and navigate until I should reach the Indies, and deliver the embassy of your Highnesses to those princes, and thus accomplish what you had commanded me; and therefore I thought to write all this voyage very exactly from day to day, every thing which I should do, or see, or experience, as will be seen in the sequel. And beside describing every night what passes in the day, and every day how we sail in the night, I design to construct a new chart for navigation, in which I will mark the waters and lands of the ocean in their proper places under their points; and moreover to compose a book, and represent the whole by picture, in latitude from the equator, and longitude from the West; and above all it is very necessary that I forego sleep and attempt much in navigation in order to accomplish it, which things will require great toil.'-Tom. I. p. 1–3. The first thing, which strikes us in the journal, is the artifice, to which Columbus was continually driven, to sustain the sinking courage of his crews. Nowhere is the exalted character of this truly great man more strikingly displayed, than in the fortitude and magnanimity with which he bore up against the manifold obstacles to the prosecution of his magnificent undertaking. He had suffered the hardships of penury and oppression, with spirits unbroken, with hopes unrepressed. Animated by the conviction that undiscovered worlds lay hidden in the western sea, and that he was the instrument ordained to discover and explore them, he had happily overcome the superstitions of the priesthood, who in the outset stigmatized his hypothesis by the odious name of heresy. The incredulity of the govern ment had yielded to the force of truth; and its parsimony was melted by his ardor. The narrowminded individuals, who, unable to rise themselves, hung the weight of their jealousy around his neck as usual, to hold down his lofty genius to the level of their own lowly career, he had shaken off at last in triumph. He was now floating upon the full tide of adventurous experiment. But here also the ignorance and envy of his fellows pursued him at every hour. His unalterable belief in the existence of the lands he sought, would have availed him little, had not his preeminent nautical skill exacted the confidence of those around him, and his intellect and courage proved equal to any emergency of fortune. For when his daring prow was pointed to the west, and his companions felt themselves on the bosom of the great deep, leaving home if not life behind, and sailing they knew not whither, it demanded a rare combination of extraordinary talents for one man, an obscure foreigner, to retain the obedience of his turbulent but fainthearted followers. Their terrors began to be troublesome a few days after quitting Gomera, on perceiving the variation of the magnetic needle. Columbus deserves the honor of being the first to observe this phenomenon, which still remains among the unexplained mysteries of nature. The surprise and consternation of his officers and men on the occasion are sufficient proof that it was unnoticed until then. Some writers have ascribed the credit of making this observation to Cabot, in 1497; but Las Casas, Ferdinand Columbus, Herrera, and Muñoz had all concurred in claiming it for the Admiral; and the following extract from the journal of his first voyage, dated September 13th, taken in connexion with a passage in his account of his third voyage, is considered by Señor Navarrete as establishing the fact. He succeeded in quieting the apprehensions of his people by an ingenious explanation, which, however, was unsatisfactory to his own mind. In reading the passages we are about to cite, it should be observed, that they are not taken from the original journal of Columbus, but from a mere abstract in the words of Las Casas; and as it appears from Muñoz's unfinished Historia del Nuevo-Mundo, that Columbus kept two journals, one private and authentic, and the other with false reckoning and specious statements, it would seem that both were used in making this abstract, the phrase 'the Admiral says' often introducing not what he thought, but what he wished his compan |