The publications of the Hakluyt Society (founded in 1846) made available edited (and sometimes translated) early accounts of exploration. The first series, which ran from 1847 to 1899, consists of 100 books containing published or previously unpublished works by authors from Christopher Columbus to Sir Francis Drake, and covering voyages to the New World, to China and Japan, to Russia and to Africa and India. The Canary Islands have been known to European countries since the Roman era. In 1402, the kingdom of Castile sent an expeditionary force, led by French explorers Jean de Béthencourt (1362–1425) and Gadifer de la Salle (1340–1415), to conquer the islands. This volume, first published in English in 1872, contains a contemporary account of the conquest written by Pierre Bontier and Jean Le Verrier, both members of the expedition; it contains valuable details of the indigenous inhabitants of the islands.