Here is the first complete and adequate English translation of the famous biography of Columbus by his son. The book was written in Spanish but originally published in translation in Italian in 1571. No ordinary "life," the book is a moving and personal document, re-creating the action and drama of discovery.

Provoked in part by the Crown's attempts to diminish Columbus' role as Discoverer, it reveals the restrained emotions of a loving son jealous of his father's honor.

Ferdinand had access to all his father's papers. At the age of thirteen he accompanied Columbus on the last, the High Voyage, and participated in many of the events of which he wrote.

The action of his narrative has the irresistible excitement of an adventure story: shipwreck, storms, battles with mutineer or Indians. Ferdinand tells matter-of-factly about griffins, Amazons, and sorcerers. A monstrous fish is a warning of a great storm. A waterspout is dissolved by reading the Gospel according to St. John.

But the Histoire is not all concerned with the voyages. There are also accounts of Columbus ashore, with his family to whom he was "very pleasant, though with a certain gravity...": as an inept administrator helpless to cope with the greed and violence in Espanola; as a lover of nature who was tempted by the beauty of one spot to stay there forever.

Ferdinand's imaginative insight into the many-faceted personnality of the Discoverer, and his artistry with words, make this biography, as Henry Vignaud has said, "the most important of our sources of information on the life of the discoverer of America."

From the dust jacket