US returns 1493 Christopher Columbus letter to Vatican

AP: The United States returned to the Vatican Library a rare copy of a letter written by Christopher Columbus in 1493 announcing his discovery of the New World that was stolen and replaced with a forgery.

It's the third such return in recent years after U.S. investigators, tipped off by a rare books expert, determined that several authentic copies of the Columbus letter had been stolen from libraries across Europe and replaced with forgeries without library officials' knowledge.

The letter came from Mary Parsons, the widow of David Parsons, an Atlanta actuary who purchased it from a rare book dealer in New York in 2004, unaware it had been stolen from the Vatican.

The 8-page text, handwritten and copied by hand in Latin, conveys Columbus' marvel at the fertile islands he found, "full of the greatest variety of trees reaching to the stars," and the timid natives who Columbus believed were ripe for conquest by Spain and conversion to Christianity.

The letter is one of a few dozen authentic, reprinted copies of Columbus' original letter, which was handwritten in Spanish in April 1493 and almost immediately reprinted in Latin by the Rome printer Stephan Plannck.

Columbus had sent the letter to Spain's King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella to offer his first impressions of the riches that were to be found in what he believed to be the eastern edge of Asia.

The Vatican had acquired the letter in 1921 as part of a collection of rare books and manuscripts.