Page:Legendaryislands00babcuoft.djvu/163

 IDENTIFICATION OF ANTILLIA 145 marked must be reckoned as Americana." 3 The word "four- teenth" is probably an accidental substitute for "fifteenth." The reference to Behaim undoubtedly means the often-quoted in- scription on his globe of 1492, which avers that "1414 a ship from Spain got nighest it without being endangered." 4 This seems to record an approach rather than an actual landing. But at least it was evidently believed that Antillia had been nearly reached in that year by a vessel sailing from the Iberian Peninsula. Little distinction would then have been made between Spain and Portugal in such a reference by a non-Iberian. Ruysch's map of 1508 is a little more vague in its Antillia in- scription as to the time of this adventure. 6 He says it was dis- covered by the Spaniards long ago; but perhaps this means a rediscovery, for he also chronicles the refuge sought there by King Roderick in the eighth century. PETER MARTYR'S IDENTIFICATION OF ANTILLIA Both of these representations show Antillia far in the ocean dissociated from any other land, but in the work of Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, contemporary and historian of Columbus, writing before 1511, we have an explicit identification as part of a well- known group or archipelago. He has been narrating the discovery of Cuba and Hispaniola and proceeds: Turning, therefore, the sterns of his ships toward the east, he assumed that he had found Ophir, whither Solomon's ships sailed for gold, but, the descriptions of the cosmographers well considered, it seemeth that both these and the other islands adjoining are the islands of Antillia. 6 Perhaps he meant delineations, like those we have yet to con- sider, and not descriptions in words; or writings concerning these 5 A. E. Nordenskiold: Periplus: An Essay on the Early History of Charts and Sailing-Directions, transl. by F. A. Bather, Stockholm, 1897, P- i?7- 4 E. G. Ravenstein: Martin Behaim: His Life and His Globe, London, 1908, P- 77- 6 A. E. Nordenskiold: Facsimile-Atlas to the Early History of Cartography, transl. by J. A. Ekelof and C. R. Markham, Stockholm, 1889, p. 65 and PI. 32. 6 Pietro Martyr d'Anghiera: The Decades of the New World or West India, transl. by Rycharde Eden, London, 1597, First Decade, p. 6. For a modern edition of this work see "De Orbe Novo: The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera," transl. by F. A. MacNutt, 2 vols., New York, 1912.