All existing copies of the journal are based on the journal's abstract – a manuscript of 76 folios discovered later in the library of the Duke of the Infantado by Martín Fernández de Navarrete.[2] The manuscript was kept in the Biblioteca Nacional de España until 1925 when it was reported as missing.[2] Navarrete reported the discovery of the journal's abstract to his friend, Juan Batista Muñoz, who used it in his Historia del Nuevo Mundo published in 1793.[2] In 1825, Navarrete published the abstract with expanded abbreviations, spelled out numerals, corrected punctuation and modernized spelling.[2] All editions of Navarrete's copy since 1825 differ to some extent from the las Casas copy. In 1892, an edition of Navarrete's copy was published by Italian scholar Cesare De Lollis with critical apparatus. In 1962, Carlos Sanz published a facsimile of the Las Casas copy using Navarrete's copy.
Bartolomé de las Casas did not have the original journal either and ordered a scribe to make a copy of the journal's abstract.[2] The scribe made several errors while copying the abstract, such as frequent confusions of Columbian leagues with Roman miles.[2] The authenticity of las Casas's copy was challenged by Henri Vignaud and Rómulo D. Carbia, both of whom believed the copy was largely or entirely a fabrication.[11] In 1939, las Casas's copy was proven to be authentic by Samuel Eliot Morison, and this view was endorsed in later studies.[11]
Columbus's journal has been translated into English, Italian, French, German, Russian and other languages.[2] The first English translation was made by Samuel Kettell and published in 1827.[12] In 1991, an English translation based on the Sanz facsimile of the las Casas copy was published by the University of Oklahoma Press.[13] John Cummins wrote The Voyage of Christopher Columbus: Columbus' Own Journal of Discovery in 1992, mixing translated parts of las Casas’s copy of the journal with excerpts from Diego Columbus's biography, to provide a comprehensive first-hand account of Columbus’s first voyage.[14]
