_Most Serene Prince: I have been engaged in navigating from my youth. I have voyaged on the seas for nearly forty years. I have visited all known quarters of the world and have conversed with a great number of learned men--with ecclesiastics, with seculars, with Latins, with Greeks, with Moors, and with persons of all sorts of religions. I have acquired some knowledge of navigation, of astronomy, and of geometry. I am sufficiently expert in designing the chart of the earth to place the cities, the rivers, and the mountains where they are situated. I have applied myself to the study of works on cosmography, on history, and on philosophy. I feel myself at present strongly urged to undertake the discovery of the Indies; and I come to your Highness to supplicate you to favor my enterprise. I doubt not that those who hear it will turn it into ridicule; but if your Highness will give me the means of executing it, whatever the obstacles may be I hope to be able to make it succeed._[14] Translation of a letter written by Christopher Columbus from the court of Queen Isabella at Barcelona to Padre Juan Perez de Marchena, a Franciscan monk, Prior of the Convent of Santa Maria de la Rabida, Huelva, Spain (Date, 1492): _Our Lord God has heard the prayers of His servants. The wise and virtuous Isabel, touched by the grace of Heaven, has kindly listened to this poor man's words. All has turned out well. I have read to them our plan, it has been accepted, and I have been called to the court to state the proper means for carrying out the designs of Providence. My courage swims in a sea of consolation, and my spirit rises in praise to God. Come as soon as you can; the Queen looks for you, and I much more than she. I commend myself to the prayers of my dear sons and you._ _The grace of God be with you, and may our Lady of Rabida bless you._ COLUMBUS' OWN ACCOUNT OF HIS GREAT DISCOVERY. Translation of a letter sent by Columbus to Luis de Santangel, Chancellor of the Exchequer of Aragon, respecting the islands found in the Indies; inclosing another for their Highnesses (Ferdinand and Isabella). R. H. Major, F. S. A., Keeper of the Department of Maps and Charts in the British Museum and Honorary Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society of England, states that the peculiar value of the following letter, descriptive of the first important voyage of Columbus, is that the events described are from the pen of him to whom the events occurred. In it we have laid before us, as it were from Columbus' own mouth, a clear statement of his opinions and conjectures on what were to him great cosmical riddles--riddles which have since been solved mainly through the light which his illustrious deeds have shed upon the field of our observation: