This episode introduces the famous "Letter of Discovery" of Christopher Columbus, and explores the rhetorical strategies the author employs in his representation of the New World and its inhabitants. Through reading this letter alongside the account of Bartholome de las Casas—which offers a starkly contrasting vision of colonization and its violence—and by considering other pairings, conversations, debates and revisions evident in so-called "discovery narratives", we begin to see the ways in which writing and rhetoric shaped European perspectives of both the New World and its indigenous residents.