Excerpt from De Soto, Coronado, Cabrillo: Explorers of the Northern Mystery A magic date: 1492. The year began with Christopher Columbus watching the Moors surrender the city of Gra nada, their last stronghold in Spain, to the joint monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella. He reminded them of the triumph in a summation he wrote later of what he too had accomplished that year. I saw the banners of your High nesses raised on the towers of the Alhambra in the city of Granada, and I saw the Moorish king go out of the gate of the city and kiss the hands of your Highnesses and of my lord the Prince. Shortly after the victory, he added, your Highnesses deter mined to send me, Christopher Colum bus to the countries of India, so that I might see what they were like, the lands and the people, and might seek out and know the nature of everything that is there. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.