The Lost Charts of Columbus

"The Lost Charts of Columbus" is the sequel of "The Golden Helmet". It was created by Don Rosa and originally published in Donald Duck Adventures #44.

Plot

The Junior Woodchucks organized a raffle in order to raise funds to further research on the original Junior Woodchucks Guidebook, based on findings made by an expedition sponsored by Scrooge McDuck in Guardians of the Lost Library and offered a trip as first prize. Donald Duck doesn't understand why to organize a raffle in Duckburg since Gladstone Gander always wins. He's then told that the winner for this one must be there to get the prize, thus inspiring him on how to keep Gladstone from winning.

Donald tricked Gladstone into a knot-making machine. While he was out, the Junior Woodchucks R.A.F.F.L.E.R. draws a ticket and picks Donald Duck as winner. Since he wasn't there because he was busy trying to keep Gladstone away, he was disqualified and another raffle ticket had to be picked. Gladstone was the new winner. At this point, Donald arrives and doesn't know his name had been previously picked. Gladstone escapes from the machine on time to get the prize and asks where's he going for the trip. He was disappointed as it was a fishing trip to Canada. Donald commented about how unfair it is. one of his nephews (don't ask who - their Junior Woodchucks uniforms make it impossible to tell them apart) tried to tell him about Donald being previously picked but another one said "he's better not knowing".

Gladstone, wanting to know why he won such a prize, invites Donald to go with him. Donald's nephews asked him to accept, since this trip is to where they're going to study the chart, located in the original Junior Woodchucks Guidebook. There, a fisherman feels sorry for Gladstone not getting any fish, but he replies saying he learned there's another purpose for the trip: recovering valuable objects from the sea. One of them turns to be The Golden Helmet. The fisherman said he had spent a lot of time and money trying to get it and Gladstone just got it by luck and then he tells the history behind the helmet. Donald asks how he knows about it and the fisherman reveals himself to be Azure Blue.

Donald then tells Gladstone a very summarized version of their original adventures and asks him to throw the helmet back at sea. Blue suggests Gladstone to throw something else. Meanwhile, the nephews discover the lost charts of Christopher Columbus and maps of other claims to North America and Donald asks them to find one older than Olaf's. Back to Duckburg, our heroes see Gladstone leaving a press conference and ask him if it wasn't him claiming ownership of North America and he says he doesn't want the responsibility of being a landlord and that he isn't a descendant of Olaf the Blue. Azure was announcing his claim when Donald and his nephews tell the press about an older claim made by an abbot which nullifies olaf's one.

Unfortunately, this causes a lot of people to search for an evidence of this claim in order to own North America. The artifact which proves this claim was later found by Lawyer Sharky, who, since the abbot took a vow of poverty, instead of trying to prove to be related to him, restored his congregation and claimed ownership of North America in name of it. His victory, just like Azure's, also was short-lived, as the nephews find an even older claim made by a Chinese man named Hui-Shen.

At this point, Azure Blue decides to give the Golden Helmet to our heroes, as it's no longer useful for his plans of world domination by America. The quest for ownership of North America leads our heroes to the ruins of an ancient tribe where they find a big old teak wheel proving this claim. Sharky finds it and our heroes(mainly Donald) have a lot out trouble keeping him from destroying it. When Sharky finally gets the wheel, Azure shows up trying to get the wheel and tell Sharky it's too late to destroy it since many witnesses saw it. Sharky says there's a way to use the wheel to make them both emperors of North America and picks their contract Sharky recovered after learning blue recovered the Golden Helmet.

After the villains leave, the nephews learn about an even even older claim supposedly made by an ancient civilization. Meanwhile, in a Brutopian hotel, Blue and Sharky are waiting until they have letters from enough descendants of the Chinese explorer to be allowed to rule America in their names. Upon learning from the newspapers about our heroes' discovery, which led them back to the Library of Alexandria (see Guardians of the Lost Library for details), Blue and Sharky went to a desert land where, on the remains of an old Native American ship, our heroes have found a stone tablet containing a claim to nullify theirs.

After retrieving the tablet from our heroes, they throw away the wheel (now useless) and decide to use the tablet to rule North America for themselves instead of for the descendants of the Chinese explorer. In the press conference, a mysterious reporter asks our villains if they now considers the other claims null and void and Sharky says they were misled by false claims. Unfortunately, the translator they hired couldn't translate the claim, since it wasn't made by the people they thought were behind it (the Phoenicians). The mysterious reporter volunteers himself to translate it and says the claim has been made by Native-Americans, thus meaning our villains couldn't use it to own North America.

Defeated, our villains now had to deal with enormous bills to pay for the Brutopian hotel's services and the several ads made in China trying to contact the Chinese explorer's descendants. In the epilogue, Donald and his nephews look at the tablet upside-down and learn it's actually a claim to Europe, meaning that, by Europe's own Charlemagne Laws, the Native-Americans own Europe. Donald and his nephews comment about how it will finally make the U.N. revoke the Code of Discovery law.

External links

*Inducks comic|D+94144