The Log of Christopher Columbus' First Voyage to America in the Year 1492. This item is unavailable.The Log of Christopher Columbus' First Voyage to America in the Year 1492

2011 Reprint of the 1920 Edition. Illustrated by Cosgrove. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. This is the actual log of Christopher Columbus as copied out by his companion, Bartholomew Las Casas. Besides being authentic source material about the voyage and the core of the Columbus legend, this journal has all the day-by-day enchantment of a long sea voyage with all the drama of a small ship steering into the unknown-the first pelican, a crab in the seaweed, a branch of roseberries and a carved log found floating in the water, mutterings of mutiny and the constant watch for signs of land. John Cosgrove, the illustrator, adds to the book on every page with pictures of whales and riggings, compasses and charts, which are both decorative and accurate pictorial footnotes to the log.

Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) was a navigator, colonizer, and explorer from Genoa, Italy, whose voyages across the Atlantic Ocean led to general European awareness of the American continents in the Western Hemisphere. With his four voyages of exploration and several attempts at establishing a settlement on the island of Hispaniola, all funded by Isabella I of Castile, he initiated the process of Spanish colonization which foreshadowed general European colonization of the "New World". Although not the first to reach the Americas from Europe-he was preceded by at least one other group, the Norse, led by Leif Ericson, who built a temporary settlement 500 years earlier at L'Anse aux Meadows-Columbus initiated widespread contact between Europeans and indigenous Americans. The term "pre-Columbian" is usually used to refer to the peoples and cultures of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus and his European successors.