When he returned to Spain in 1493, Columbus reported to the royal court in Barcelona, and gave his original log of the first voyage to the Sovereigns. Queen Isabela ordered the log to be copied, resulting in the so-called Barcelona Copy. The original has not been seen since, but the Barcelona Copy was returned to Columbus prior to his second voyage, and remained in his possession until his death in 1506. It then passed into the hands of his heirs, but it too was lost sometime after 1554.
Before that time, however, much of the contents of the Barcelona Copy was abstracted by Bartolome de Las Casas into the document now known as the Diario. Las Casas was a friend of the Columbus family, and spent several decades working on a history of the Spanish in the New World. He probably made the Diario as an aid in the construction of this history. The document was rediscovered in 1795 by Ferdinand de Navarette, and first published in 1825. It remains our primary historical record of the first voyage of Columbus.
While most of the Diario is written in third person, from time to time Las Casas quotes the Barcelona Copy directly, switching to Columbus's first person narrative. The largest of these quoted sections is the part describing the first landing, and continuing on through all the Bahamian islands. This is just the part that the landfall dispute is most concerned with.
The Diario contains a huge amount of detail about Columbus's activities on these days. On the following pages, we will discuss the inter-island track in detail.
If you want just the bare facts, for the entire log of the first voyage -- quite long! -- here is John Thacher's translation of the log. Or for a navigational summary only, here is my own reconstruction.
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