awkward if the true distances from the fourth to
the fifth islands, and from the latter to Padre, had fallen short of the
"log," since it would make the unexplainable situation which occurs in
Irving's course and distance from Mucaras Reef to Boca de Caravela.

From end to end of the Samana track there are but three discrepancies.
At the third island, two leagues ought to be two miles. At the fourth
island twelve leagues ought to be twelve miles. The bearing between the
third and fourth islands is not quite as the chart has it, nor does it
agree with the courses he steered. These three are fairly explained, and
I think that no others can be mustered to disturb the concord between
this track and the journal.

Rev. Mr. Cronan, in his recent voyage, discovered a cave at Watling's
island, where were many skeletons of the natives. It is thought that a
study of the bones in these skeletons will give some new ethnological
information as to the race which Columbus found, which is now, thanks to
Spanish cruelty, entirely extinct.

APPENDIX B.

The letter to the Lady Juana, which gives Columbus's own statement of
the indignities put upon him in San Domingo, is written in his most
crabbed Spanish. He never wrote the Spanish language accurately, and
the letter, as printed from his own manuscript, is even curious in its
infelicities. It is so striking an illustration of the character of the
man that we print here an abstract of it, with some passages translated
directly from his own language.

Columbus writes, towards the end of the year 1500, to the former
nurse of Don Juan, an account of the treatment he has received. "If
my complaint of the world is new, its method of abuse is very old," he
says. "God has made me a messenger of the new heaven and the new earth
which is spoken of in the Apocalypse by the mouth of St. John, after
having been spoken of by Isaiah, and he showed me the place where it
was." Everybody was incredulous, but the queen alone gave the spirit
of intelligence and zeal to the undertaking. Then the people talked of
obstacles and expense. Columbus says "seven years passed in talk, and
nine in executing some noted acts which are worthy of remembrance," but
he returned reviled by all.

"If I had stolen the Indies and had given them to the Moors I could not
have had greater enmity shown to me in Spain." Columbus would have liked
then to give up the business if he could have come before the queen.
However