Such men it was, who, at the last, dragged him down from his noble position, so that he died unhonored, dispirited and poor.

To the same misfortune, probably, do we owe it that, for a history of this voyage, we have no longer authority so charming as the simple, gossipy journal which Columbus kept through the first voyage, of which the greater part has happily been preserved.
It may be that he was too much pressed by his varied duties to keep up such a journal.

For it is alas! an unfortunate condition of human life, that men are most apt to write journals when they have nothing to tell, and that in the midst of high activity, the record of that activity is not made by the actor.

In the present case, a certain Doctor Chanca, a native of Seville, had been taken on board Columbus's ship, perhaps with the wish that he should be the historian of the expedition.

It may be that in the fact that his journal was sent home is the reason why the Admiral's, if he kept one, has never been preserved.