Regarding the chances of further developments in depositories of manuscripts, Harrisse, in his _Notes on Columbus_,[42] says: “For the present the historian will find enough to gather from the Archivo General de Indias in the Lonja at Seville, which contains as many as forty-seven thousand huge packages, brought, within the last fifty years, from all parts of Spain. But the richest mine as yet unexplored we suppose to be the archives of the monastic orders in Italy; as all the expeditions to the New World were accompanied by Franciscan, Dominican, Benedictine, and other monks, who maintained an active correspondence with the heads of their respective congregations. The private archives of the Dukes of Veraguas, Medina-Sidonia, and Del Infantado, at Madrid, are very rich. There is scarce anything relating to that early period left in Simancas; but the original documents in the Torre do Tombo at Lisbon are all intact”[43] Among the latest contributions to the documentary history of the Spanish colonization is a large folio, _Cartas de Indias, publicalas por primera vez el ministerio de fomento_, issued in Madrid in 1877 under the auspices of the Spanish Government. It contains one hundred and eight letters,[44] covering the period 1496 to 1586, the earliest date being a supposed one for a letter of Columbus which is without date. The late Mr. George Dexter,[45] who has printed[46] a translation of this letter (together with one of another letter, Feb. 6, 1502, and one of Vespucius, Dec. 9, 1508), gives his reasons for thinking the date should be between March 15 and Sept. 25, 1493.[47] At Madrid and Paris was published, in 1883, a single octavo volume,—_Costa-Rica, Nicaragua y Panamá en el siglo XVI., su historia y sus limítes segun los documentos del Archivo de Indias de Sevilla, del de Simancas, etc., recogidos y publicados con notas y aclaraciones históricas y geográficas, por D. Manuel M. de Peralta_. The more special and restricted documentary sources are examined in the successive chapters of the present volume. NARRATIVE AND CRITICAL HISTORY OF AMERICA. CHAPTER I. COLUMBUS AND HIS DISCOVERIES. BY JUSTIN WINSOR, _The Editor._