Note 5 — INTRODUCTION.

Some of the documents at Simancas and in other repositories, beginning with 1485, have been edited in the Rolls Series (published for the English Government) by G. A. Bergenroth and by Gayangos (London, 1862-1879), in the Calendar of Letters, Despatches, and State Papers relating to Negotiations between England and Spain, contained in five volumes. Vol. i. comes through 1509; and the first paper in it is a complaint of Ferdinand and Isabella against Columbus for his participancy in the piratical service of the French in 1485. Various documents from the archives of Simancas are given in Alaman’s La República Megicana, three volumes, 1844-1849. We get glimpses in the Historia of Las Casas of a large number of the letters of Columbus, to which he must have had access, but which are now lost. Harrisse thinks it was at Simancas, that Las Casas must have found them; for when engaged on that work he was living within two leagues of that repository. It seems probable, also, that Las Casas must have had use of the Biblioteca Colombina, when it was deposited in the convent of San Pablo (1544-1552), from whose Dominican monks Harrisse thinks it possible that Las Casas obtained possession of the Toscanelli map. He regrets, however, that for the personal history of Columbus and his family, Las Casas furnishes no information which cannot be found more nearly at first hand elsewhere. See Harrisse, Christophe Colomb, i. 122, 125-127, 129, 133.