A letter signed by Christopher Columbus in 1493, in which he gives an account of his discoveries after his first voyage to America was sold at auction at Christie’s in New York for 3.92 million dollars, well above the initial estimate, which was between 1 and 1.5 million, according to Pledge Times.

The epistle known as “De insulis nuper inventus” (Of the newly discovered islands), also known as “the letter of Columbus”, consists of four sheets printed on both sides with a text in Latin where the Genoese describes the topography and the people he met in what he still calls “the islands of the Indies” in reference to Hispaniola and other smaller islands.

It is a text translated from Spanish to Latin, dated “on the third day before the calends of May 1493” and sent to Gabriel Sánchez, “Treasurer of the most serene sovereigns Ferdinand and Isabella (the Catholic Monarchs)”, and is preceded by an introduction in which Columbus is described as the man “to whom our era owes a great debt.”

Christie’s highlights that the epistle represented in its time “the first media frenzy ever seen, expanding rapidly throughout Europe and forever changing popular perception of the size, shape and possibilities of its world.”

It is not the only available copy of “Columbus’s letter”, and in fact a similar one is in the funds of the New York Public Library, but it is considered one of only two to have remained in private hands to date.

Before arriving at Christie’s, the epistle was in a private Swiss library for a century, but there are no details about its previous “life”, although Margaret Ford, head of foreign books and manuscripts at Christie’s, pointed out to the New York Times that “nothing is suspicious” about its origin after a detailed investigation carried out by his company.

The mention is not trivial considering that the “letter of Columbus” is a document that has been falsified on numerous occasions, and in others stolen by art dealers, according to the newspaper.