JOURNAL.—Columbus himself refers to this in his letter to Pope Alexander VI. (1503) as being kept in the style of Cæsar’s _Commentaries_; and Irving speaks of it as being penned “from day to day with guileless simplicity.” In its original form it has not been found; but we know that Las Casas used it in his _Historia_, and that Ferdinand Columbus must have had it before him while writing what passes for his Life of his father. An abridgment of the Journal in the hand of Las Casas, was discovered by Navarrete, who printed it in the first volume of his _Coleccion_ in 1825; it is given in a French version in the Paris edition of the same (vol. ii.), and in Italian in Torre’s _Scritti di Colombo_, 1864. Las Casas says of his abstract, that he follows the very words of the Admiral for a while after recording the landfall; and these parts are translated by Mr. Thomas, of the State Department at Washington, in G. A. Fox’s paper on “The Landfall” in the _Report of the Coast Survey_ for 1880. The whole of the Las Casas text, however, was translated into English, at the instigation of George Ticknor, by Samuel Kettell, and published in Boston as _A Personal Narrative of the First Voyage_ in 1827;[161] and it has been given in part, in English, in Becher’s _Landfall of Columbus_. The original is thought to have served Herrera in his _Historia General_.[162] LETTERS.—We know that on the 12th of February, 1493, about a week before reaching the Azores on his return voyage, and while his ship was laboring in a gale, Columbus prepared an account of his discovery, and incasing the parchment in wax, put it in a barrel, which he threw overboard. That is the last heard of it. He prepared another account, perhaps duplicate, and protecting it in a similar way, placed it on his poop, to be washed off in case his vessel foundered. We know nothing further of this account, unless it be the same, substantially, with the letters which he wrote just before making a harbor at the Azores. One of these letters, at least, is dated off the Canaries; and it is possible that it was written earlier on the voyage, and post-dated, in expectation of his making the Canaries; and when he found himself by stress of weather at the Azores, he neglected to change the place. The original of neither of these letters is known.