PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME, AND BROWN, PATERNOSTER-ROW;
AND CADELL AND DAVIES, IN THE STRAND.

1812.

Strahan and Prefton, Printers-Street, London

A

GENERAL COLLECTION

OF

VOYAGES AND TRAVELS.

AMERICA.

THE HISTORY

OF THE

LIFE AND ACTIONS OF ADMIRAL CHRISTOPHER COLON,

AND OF HIS

DISCOVERY OF THE WEST INDIES, CALLED THE NEW WORLD,

NOW IN POSSESSION OF HIS CATHOLIC MAJESTY.

Written by his own Son Don FERDINAND COLON*.

THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

BEING the fon of the Admiral Chriftopher Colon, a perfon worthy of eternal memory, who discovered the West Indies, and having myself failed with him fome time, it seemed to me but reasonable, that among other things I have writ, one and the chiefest should be his life, and wonderful discovery of the West Indies or New World; because his great and continual fufferings, and the diftempers he laboured under, did not allow him time to form his notes and obfervations into a method fit for history; yet knowing there were many others who had attempted this work I forbore, till reading their books I found in them, that which is ufual among hiftorians, viz. that they magnify fome things, leffen others, and sometimes pass that over in filence which they ought to give a very particular account of. For this reafon I refolved to undergo the labour of this task, thinking it better I fhould lie under the cenfure my skill and presumption shall be subject to, than to fuffer the truth of what relates to fo noble a perfon

VOL. XII.

*Churchill's Coll. vol. ii.

B

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