A Regional Guide to Books Published by The Hakluyt Society

The Journal of Christopher Columbus contains The Sailing Directions of Columbus – Letters from Toscanelli; The Journal of the First Voyage of Columbus in 1492–93; 11 documents relating to the voyages of John Cabot from Bristol who discovered North America at Newfoundland in 1497; 13 documents relating to the voyages of Sebastian Cabot; and 7 documents relating to the voyages of Gaspar Corte-Real t. [...] Narrative of the Proceedings of Pedrarias Davila in the Provinces of Tierra Firme or Castilla del Oro, and of the Discovery of the South Sea and the Coasts of Peru and Nicaragua. [...] The final Volume 5 of The True History contains Books XIV–XVII and Chapters 174–214 which describe Cortes’ expedition to Honduras, the return to Mexico, the rule of the 8 Audiencia there, and the record of the conquistadores, with an appendix including the Fifth Letter of Cortés to the Emperor King Charles V, 1526 (1st series, 40). [...] The documents describe the voyages of the English corsairs Sir Francis Drake, Sir John Hopkins, John Oxenham – the first non-Spaniard to cross the Isthmus to the South Seas, where he built a boat and raided the Pearl Islands and Spanish ships in 1577–78, and Andrew Barker, a privateer who raided the Caribbean coast at the same time. [...] The expedition was commanded by the great navigator, Alejandro Malaspina (1754–1810), an Italian nobleman, born in the Duchy of Parma, the son of the Marquis of Morello and Catalina Melilupi, and related to the princes of Soravanga.