In considering the sources of information, which are original, as distinct from those which are derivative, we must place first in importance the writings of Columbus himself. We may place next the documentary proofs belonging to private and public archives.
His prolixity.
Harrisse points out that Columbus, in his time, acquired such a popular reputation for prolixity that a court fool of Charles the Fifth linked the discoverer of the Indies with Ptolemy as twins in the art of blotting. He wrote as easily as people of rapid impulses usually do, when they are not restrained by habits of orderly deliberation. He has left us a mass of jumbled thoughts and experiences, which, unfortunately, often perplex the historian, while they of necessity aid him.
His writings.
Ninety-seven distinct pieces of writing by the hand of Columbus either exist or are known to have existed. Of such, whether memoirs, relations, or letters, sixty-four are preserved in their entirety. These include twenty-four which are wholly or in part in his own hand. All of them have been printed entire, except one which is in the Biblioteca Colombina, in Seville, the Libro de las Proficias, written apparently between 1501 and 1504, of which only part is in Columbus's own hand. A second document, a memoir addressed to Ferdinand and Isabella, before June, 1497, is now in the collection of the Marquis of San Roman at Madrid, and was printed for the first time by Harrisse in his Christophe Colomb. A third and fourth are in the public archives in Madrid, being letters addressed to the Spanish monarchs: one without date in 1496 or 1497, or perhaps earlier, in 1493, and the other February 6, 1502; and both have been printed and given in facsimile in the Cartas de Indias, a collection published by the Spanish government in 1877. The majority of the existing private papers of Columbus are preserved in Spain, in the hands of the present representative of Columbus, the Duke of Veragua, and these have all been printed in the great collection of Navarrete. They consist, as enumerated by Harrisse in his Columbus and the Bank of Saint George, of the following pieces: a single letter addressed about the year 1500 to Ferdinand and Isabella; four letters addressed to Father Gaspar Gorricio,—one from San Lucar, April 4, 1502; a second from the Grand Canaria, May, 1502; a third from Jamaica, July 7, 1503; and the last from Seville, January 4, 1505;—a memorial addressed to his son, Diego, written either in December, 1504, or in January, 1505; and eleven letters addressed also to Diego, all from Seville, late in 1504 or early in 1505.
MANUSCRIPT OF COLUMBUS
[From a MS. in the Biblioteca Colombina, given in Harrisse's Notes on Columbus.]
All in Spanish.
Without exception, the letters of Columbus of which we have knowledge were written in Spanish. Harrisse has conjectured that his stay in Spain made him a better master of that language than the poor advantages of his early life had made him of his mother tongue.