The Columbus Memorial; Containing the First Letter of Columbus Descriptive of His Voyage to the New World the Latin Letter to His Royal Patrons, and a Narrative of the Four Voyages of Amerigo Vespucci (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: [ Woodcut of a Ship at Anchor, two figures in it, and one on land; towers in the background. ] IT remains for me to tell the things seen by me in the fourth voyage, or giornata: and as I am already wearied, and also because this fourth voyage was not carried out in accordance with the purpose I Jiad formed, through a mishap which befel us in the gulf of the Atlantic sea, as Your Magnificence shall learn briefly in this sequel: I will endeavor to be brief. We departed from this port of Lisbon 6 ships in company, with the intention of going to discover an island towards the east, which is called Melaccha: of which there are news that it is very rich, and that it is as it were the storehouse of all the ships which come from the Gan- getic Sea and from the Indian Sea (just as Cadiz is the waiting room1 of all the vessels which pass from east to west, and from west to east), by the route of Galigut,2 and this Melaccha is more westerly than Caligut, andmuch more to the southward: l for we know that it lies at the level2 of 33 degrees of the antarctic hemisphere. We departed on the 10 day of May, 1503 and made directly for the isles of Cape Verde, where we careened, and took some manner of refreshment, where we stayed 13 days: and from here we departed on our voyage, sailing by the south-east wind: and as our admiral was a presumptuous and very obstinate man, he would go to examine Serra, liona, a land of Southern Ethiopia, without having any need except to make it be seen that he was captain of six ships, against the wish of all the rest of us captains: and thus navigating, when we reached the said land, so great were the whirlwinds that struck us, and with them the weather so adverse, that althougti we were in sight of it [the shore] quite four days, the foul weather never allo...