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The work for which a prize is offered is to be a prose essay, a true historic picture giving a just estimate of the grandeur of the occasion to be celebrated.

So much has been written on this subject since the opening of the XVIth century that it would seem difficult to say anything new and good. Perhaps the details, perhaps the circumstances in the life and acts of Columbus are worthy of no little research; but already the Royal Academy of History is engaged in the erudite and diligent task of bringing together and publishing the un-edited or little known papers bearing on this question.

The book required by this contest must be of a different nature: it must be comprehensive and synoptic, and must be sufficiently concise without being either obscure or dry.

Although there is an abundance of histories of America, of voyages and discoveries, of geographic science, and of the establishment of Europeans in remote regions of the earth, there is no book that sets forth as it can be done the combined efforts of the nations of the Iberian peninsula, who, since the commencement of the XVth century, have, with a fixity of purpose and marvelous tenacity, in almost a single century of silent efforts brought about the exploration of vast continents and islands, traversed seas never before cut by Christian prows, and in emulous strife obtained almost a complete knowledge of the planet on which we live.

There is a growing interest and manifest unity in all those more important events; not to mention the circumstantial evidence borne by the charts of 1375 and the semi-fabulous voyages, such as that of Doria y Vivaldi and others less apocryphal though isolated and barren of results, like that of Ferrer, begun in 1434, when Gil Eannes doubled Cape Bojador, discovered Guinea, and