June 16, 1497
Dear King Ferdinand, Your majesty, today is June 16th, and I have finally landed on what everyone thinks is Asia. I wanted to inform you that I paid for the expedition in full and am very grateful that you let me take this voyage, as I think it will be very successful. My crew and I set sail on the 10th of May it took us only 37 days to reach our destination. We made land fall on the southern part of “Asia” or the new world as I like to call it. My crew and I stayed out at sea away from land for the first night, and as the sun rose on the second day we lowered the longboats and rowed to shore. As I was rowing I looked down at the sea and saw dark shadows circling around in the depths reminding me of the dangers of what might be ahead. As we were rowing ashore all of these savages came out of the woods with spears drawn. They had obviously been watching us and probably saw us chanting and sharing whine the night that we spotted land. As we hit land my crew and I stepped out of the boats very slowly and set our weapons in the sand. The sand on the beach was gritty and had large chunks that broke beneath our feet when we stepped out of our boats. The savages realized that we didn’t want any violence and lowered their spears. They welcomed us with fresh water and a meal, so we returned the favor by giving them the feathers from our hats which they thought were amazing. We speak completely different languages so communication is very difficult, but eventually we got a camp site set up and I started my research. I have decided to use an astrolabe and chart the stars to prove my theory that we have not been traveling to Asia, but a new world. By the third day my research was going very well and I had already charted many stars and was very close to finding the answer to my long awaited question. It took me hours upon hours of
