Nevertheless, I trust to have shown, paragraph by paragraph, wherein their several tracks are contrary to the journal, inconsistent with the true cartography of the neighborhood, and to the discredit, measurably, both of Columbus and of Las Casas.

The obscurity and the carelessness which appear in part of the diary through the Bahamas offer no obstacle to this demonstration, provided that they do not extend to the "log," or nautical part.
Columbus went to sea when he was fourteen years of age, and served there almost continuously for twenty-three years.

The strain of a sea-faring life, from so tender an age, is not conducive to literary exactness.
Still, for the very reason of this sea experience, the "log" should be correct.
This is composed of the courses steered, distances sailed over, bearings of islands from one another, trend of shores, etc.

The recording of these is the daily business of seamen, and here the entries were by Columbus himself, chiefly to enable him, on his return to Spain, to construct that nautical map, which is promised in the prologue of the first voyage.
In crossing the Atlantic the Admiral understated to the crew each day's run, so that they should not know how far they had gone into an unknown ocean.

Las Casas was aware of this counterfeit "log," but his abridgment is from that one which Columbus kept for his own use.
If the complicated courses and distances in this were originally wrong, or if the copy of them is false, it is obvious that they cannot be "plotted" upon a correct chart.