Notes

A. The Form of the Earth.—It is not easy to demonstrate that the earliest Greeks believed the earth to be a flat disk, although that is the accepted and probably correct view of their belief. It is possible to examine but a small part of the earliest literature, and what we have is of uncertain date and dubious origin; its intent is religious or romantic, not scientific; its form is poetic. It is difficult to interpret it accurately, since the prevalent ideas of nature must be deduced from imagery, qualifying words and phrases, and seldom from direct description. The interpreter, doubtful as to the proportion in which he finds mingled fancy and honest faith, is in constant danger of overreaching himself by excess of ingenuity. In dealing with such a literature one is peculiarly liable to abuse the always dangerous argument by which want of knowledge is inferred from lack of mention. Other difficulties beset the use of later philosophic material, much of which is preserved only in extracts made by antagonists or by compilers, so that we are forced to confront a lack of context and possible misunderstanding or misquotation. The frequent use of the word στρογγύλος, which has the same ambiguity as our word “round” in common parlance, often leads to uncertainty. A more fruitful cause of trouble is inherent in the Greek manner of thinking of the world. It is often difficult to know whether a writer means the planet, or whether he means the agglomeration of known lands which later writers called ἡ οἰκουμένη. It is not impossible that when writers refer to the earth as encircled by the river Oceanus, they mean, not the globe, but the known lands, the eastern continent, as we say, what the Romans sometimes called orbis terrae or orbis terrarum, a term which may mean the “circle of the lands,” not the “orb of the earth.” At a later time it was a well-known belief that the earth-globe and water-globe were excentrics, so that a segment of the former projected beyond the surface of the latter in one part, and constituted the known world.

I cannot attach much importance to the line of argument with which modern writers since Voss have tried to prove that the Homeric poems represent the earth flat. That Poseidon, from the mountains of the Solymi, sees Odesseus on the sea to the west of Greece (Od. v. 282); that Helios could see his cattle in Thrinakia both as he went toward the heavens and as he turned toward the earth again (Od. xii. 380); that at sunset “all the ways are darkened;” that the sun and the stars set in and rose from the ocean,—these and similar proofs seem to me to have as little weight as attaches to the expressions “ends of the earth,” or to the flowing of Oceanus around the earth. There are, however, other and better reasons for assuming that the earth in earliest thought was flat. Such is the most natural assumption from the evidence of sight, and there is certainly nothing in the older writings inconsistent with such an idea. We know, moreover, that in the time of Socrates it was yet a matter of debate as to whether the earth was flat or spherical, as it was in the time of Plutarch. We are distinctly told by Aristotle that various forms were attributed to earth by early philosophers, and the implication is that the spherical theory, whose truth he proceeds to demonstrate, was a new thought. It is very unlikely, except to those who sincerely accept the theory of a primitive race of unequalled wisdom, that the sphericity of the earth, having been known to Homer, should have been cast aside by the Ionic philosophers and the Epicureans, and forgotten by educated people five or six centuries later, as it must have been before the midnight voyage of Helios in his golden cup, and before similar attempts to account for the return of the sun could have become current. Ignorance of the true shape of the earth is also indicated by the common view that the sun appeared much larger at rising to the people of India than to the Grecians, and at setting presented the same phenomenon in Spain. As we have seen, the description of Tartarus in the Theogony of Hesiod, which Fick thinks an interpolation of much later date, likens the earth to a lid.

The question has always been an open one. Crates of Mallos, Strabo, and other Homer-worshippers of antiquity, could not deny to the poet any knowledge current in their day, but their reasons for assuming that he knew the earth to be a globe are not strong. In recent years President Warren has maintained that Homer’s earth was a sphere with Oceanus flowing around the equator, that the pillars of Atlas meant the axis of the earth, and that Ogygia was at the north pole. Homer, however, thought that Oceanus flowed around the known lands, not that it merely grazed their southern border: it is met with in the east where the sun rises, in the west (Od. iv. 567), and in the north (Od. v. 275).

That “Homer and all the ancient poets conceived the earth to be a plane” was distinctly asserted by Geminus in the first century b.c., and has been in general steadfastly maintained by moderns like Voss, Völcker, Buchholtz, Gladstone, Martin, Schaefer, and Gruppe. It is therefore intrinsically probable, commonly accepted, and not contradicted by what is known of the literature of the time itself.

B. Homer’s Geography.—There is an extensive literature on the geographic attainments of Homer, but it is for the most part rather sad reading. The later Greeks had a local identification for every place mentioned in the Odyssey; but conservative scholars at present are chary of such, while agreed in confining the scene of the wanderings to the western Mediterranean. Gladstone, in Homer and the Homeric Age, has argued with ingenuity for the transfer of the scene from the West to the East, and has constructed on this basis one of the most extraordinary maps of “the ancient world” known. K. E. von Baer (Wo ist der Schauplatz d. Fahrten d. Odysseus zu finden? 1875), agreeing with Gladstone, “identifies” the Lastrygonian harbor with Balaklava, and discovers the very poplar grove of Persephone. It is a favorite scheme with others to place the wanderings outside the columns of Hercules, among the Atlantic isles, and to include a circumnavigation of Africa. The better opinion seems to me that which leaves the wanderings in the western Mediterranean, which was considered to extend much farther north than it actually does. The maps which represent the voyage within the actual coast lines of the sea, and indicate the vessel passing through the Straits to the ocean, are misleading. There is not enough given in the poem to resolve the problem. The courses are vague, the distances uncertain or conventional,—often neither are given; and the matter is complicated by the introduction of a floating island, and the mysterious voyages from the land of the Phaeacians. It is a pleasant device adopted by Buchholtz and others to assume that where the course is not given, the wind last mentioned must be considered to still hold, and surely no one will grudge the commentators this amelioration of their lot.

C. Supposed References to America.—It is well known that Columbus’s hopes were in part based on passages in classical authors. Glareanus, quoting Virgil in 1527, after Columbus’s discovery had made the question of the ancient knowledge prominent, has been considered the earliest to open the discussion; and after this we find it a common topic in the early general writers on America, like Las Casas (Historia General), Ramusio (introd. vol. iii.), and Acosta (book i. ch. 11, etc.)

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was not an uncommon subject of academic and learned discussion. It was a part of the survey made by many of the writers who discussed the origin of the American tribes, like Garcia, Lafitau, Samuel Mather, Robertson, not to name others.

It was not till Humboldt compassed the subject in his Examen Critique de l’histoire de la géographie du nouveau continent (Paris, 1836), that the field was fully scanned with a critical spirit, acceptable to the modern mind. He gives two of the five volumes which comprise the work to this part of his subject, and very little has been added by later research, while his conclusions still remain, on the whole, those of the most careful of succeeding writers. The French original is not equipped with guides to its contents, such as a student needs; but this is partly supplied by the index in the German translation. The impediments which the student encounters in the Examen Critique are a good deal removed in a book which is on the whole the easiest guide to the sources of the subject,—Paul Gaffarel’s Etude sur les rapports de l’Amérique et de l’ancien continent avant Christophe Colomb (Paris, 1869).

The literature of the supposed old-world communication with America shows other phases of this question of ancient knowledge, and may be divided, apart from the Greek embraced in the previous survey, into those of the Egyptians, Phœnicians, Tyrians, Carthaginians, and Romans.

The Egyptian theory has been mainly worked out in the present century. Paul Felix Cabrera’s Teatro critico Americano, printed with Rio’s Palenqué (Lond., 1822), formulates the proofs. An essay by A. Lenoir, comparing the Central American monuments with those of Egypt, is appended to Dupaix’s Antiquités Méxicaines (1805). Delafield’s Inquiry into the Origin of the Antiquities of America (Cincinnati, 1839), traces it to the Cushites of Egypt, and cites Garcia y Cubas, Ensayo de an Estudio Comparativo entre las Pirámides Egipcias y Méxicanas. Brasseur de Bourbourg discussed the question, S’il existe des sources de l’histoire primitive du Méxique dans les monuments égyptiens de l’histoire primitive de l’ancien monde dans les monuments américains? in his ed. of Landa’s Relations des Choses de Yucatan (Paris, 1864). Buckle (Hist. of Civilization, i. ch. 2) believes the Mexican civilization to have been strictly analogous to that of India and Egypt. Tylor (Early Hist. of Mankind, 98) compares the Egyptian hieroglyphics with those of the Aztecs. John T. C. Heaviside, Amer. Antiquities, or the New World the Old, and the Old World the New (London, 1868), maintains the reverse theory of the Egyptians being migrated Americans. F. de Varnhagen works out his belief in L’origine touranienne des américains tupis-caribes et des anciens égyptiens montrée principalement par la philologie comparée; et notice d’une émigration en Amérique effectuée à travers l’Atlantique plusieurs siècles avant notre ère (Vienne 1876).

Aristotle’s mention of an island discovered by the Phœnicians was thought by Gomara and Oviedo to refer to America. The elder leading writers on the origin of the Indians, like Garcia, Horn, De Laet, and at a later day Lafitau, discuss the Phœnician theory; as does Voss in his annotations on Pomponius Mela (1658), and Count de Gebelin in his Monde primitif (Paris, 1781). In the present century the question has been touched by Cabrera in Rio’s Palenqué (1822). R. A. Wilson, in his New Conquest of Mexico, assigns (ch. v.) the ruins of Middle America to the Phœnicians. Morlot, in the Actes de la Société Jurassienne d’Emulation (1863), printed his “La découverte de l’Amérique par les Phènicièns.” Gaffarel sums up the evidences in a paper in the Compte Rendu, Cong. des Amér. (Nancy), i. 93.

The Tyrian theory has been mainly sustained by a foolish book, by a foolish man, An Original History of Anc. America (London, 1843), by Geo. Jones, later known as the Count Johannes (cf. Bancroft’s Native Races, v. 73).

The Carthaginian discovery rests mainly on the statements of Diodorus Siculus.

Baron Zach in his Correspondenz undertakes to say that Roman voyages to America were common in the days of Seneca, and a good deal of wild speculation has been indulged in.

D. Atlantis.—The story of Atlantis rests solely upon the authority of Plato, who sketched it in the Timaeus, and began an elaborated version in the Critias (if that fragment be by him), which old writers often cite as the Atlanticus. This is frequently forgotten by those who try to establish the truth of the story, who often write as if all statements in print were equally available as “authorities,” and quote as corroborations of the tale all mentions of it made by classical writers, regardless of the fact that all are later than Plato, and can no more than Ignatius Donnelly corroborate him. In fact, the ancients knew no better than we what to make of the story, and diverse opinions prevailed then as now. Many of these opinions are collected by Proclus in the first book of his commentary on the Timaeus, and all shades of opinion are represented from those who, like Crantor, accepted the story as simply historical, to those who regarded it as a mere fable. Still others, with Proclus himself, accepted it as a record of actual events, while accounting for its introduction in Plato by a variety of subtile metaphysical interpretations. Proclus reports that Crantor, the first commentator upon Plato (circa b.c. 300), asserted that the Egyptian priests said that the story was written on pillars which were still preserved, and he likewise quotes from the Ethiopic History of Marcellus, a writer of whom nothing else is known, a statement that according to certain historians there were seven islands in the external sea sacred to Proserpine; and also three others of great size, one sacred to Pluto, one to Ammon, and another, the middle one, a thousand stadia in size, sacred to Neptune. The inhabitants of it preserved the remembrance, from their ancestors, of the Atlantic island which existed there, and was truly prodigiously great, which for many periods had dominion over all the islands in the Atlantic sea, and was itself sacred to Neptune. Testimony like this is of little value in such a case. What comes to us at third hand is more apt to need support than give it; yet these two passages are the strongest evidence of knowledge of Atlantis outside of Plato that is preserved. We do indeed find mention of it elsewhere and earlier. Thus Strabo says that Posidonius (b.c. 135-51) suggested that, as the land was known to have changed in elevation, Atlantis might not be a fiction, but that such an island-continent might actually have existed and disappeared. Pliny also mentions Atlantis in treating of changes in the earth’s surface, though he qualifies his quotation with “si Platoni credimus.” A mention of the story in a similar connection is made by Ammianus Marcellinus.

In the Scholia to Plato’s Republic it is said that at the great Panathenaea there was carried in procession a peplum ornamented with representations of the contest between the giants and the gods, while on the peplum carried in the little Panathenaea could be seen the war of the Athenians against the Atlantides. Even Humboldt accepted this as an independent testimony in favor of the antiquity of the story; but Martin has shown that, apart from the total inconsistency of the report with the expressions of Plato, who places the narration of this forgotten deed of his countrymen at the celebration of the festival of the little Panathenaea, the scholiast has only misread Proclus, who states that the peplum depicted the repulse of the barbarians, i. e. Persians, by the Greeks. To these passages it is customary to add references to the Meropian continent of Theopompus, the Saturnian of Plutarch, the islands of Aristotle, Diodorus and Pausanias,—which is very much as if one should refer to the New Atlantis of Bacon as evidence for the existence of More’s Utopia. Plutarch in his life of Solon attributes Solon’s having given up the idea of an epic upon Atlantis to his advanced age rather than to want of leisure; but there is nothing to show that he had any evidence beyond Plato that Solon ever thought of such a poem, and Plato does not say that Solon began the poem, though Plutarch appears to have so understood him. Thus it seems more probable that all the references to Atlantis by ancient writers are derived from the story in Plato than that they are independent and corroborative statements.

With the decline of the Platonic school at Alexandria even the name of Atlantis readily vanished from literature. It is mentioned by Tertullian, and found a place in the strange system of Cosmas Indicopleustes, but throughout the Middle Ages little or nothing was known of it. That it was not quite forgotten appears from its mention in the Image du Monde, a poem of the thirteenth century, still in MS., where it is assigned a location in the Mer Betée (= coagulée). Plato was printed in Latin in 1483, 1484, 1491, and in Greek in 1513, and in 1534 with the commentary of Proclus on the Timaeus. The Timaeus was printed separately five times in the sixteenth century, and also in a French and an Italian translation.

The discovery of America doubtless added to the interest with which the story was perused, and the old controversy flamed up with new ardor. It was generally assumed that the account given by Plato was not his invention. Opinions were, however, divided as to whether he had given a correct account. Of those who believed that he had erred as to the locality or as to the destruction of the island, some thought that America was the true Atlantis, while others, with whose ideas we have no concern here, placed Atlantis in Africa, Asia, or Europe, as prejudice led them. Another class of scholars, sensible of the necessity of adhering to the text of the only extant account, accepted the whole narrative, and endeavored to find in the geography of the Atlantic, or as indicated by the resemblances between the flora, fauna, and civilization of America and of the old world, additional reasons for believing that such an island had once existed, and had disappeared after serving as a bridge by which communication between the continents was for a time carried on. The discussion was prolonged over centuries, and is not yet concluded. The wilder theories have been eliminated by time, and the contest may now be said to be between those who accept Plato’s tale as true and those who regard it as an invention. The latter view is at present in favor with the most conservative and careful scholars, but the other will always find advocates. That Atlantis was America was maintained by Gomara, Guillaume de Postel, Horn, and others incidentally, and by Birchrod in a special treatise, which had some influence even upon the geographer Cellarius. In 1669 the Sansons published a map showing America divided among the descendants of Neptune as Atlantis was divided, and even as late as 1762 Vaugondy reproduced it. In his edition of Plato, Stallbaum expressed his belief that the Egyptians might have had some knowledge of America. Cluverius thought the story was due to a knowledge of America.

Very lately Hyde Clark has found in the Atlantis fable evidence of a knowledge of America: he does not believe in the connecting island Atlantis, but he holds that Plato misinterpreted some account of America which had reached him. Except for completeness it is scarcely worth mentioning that Blackett, whose work can really be characterized by no other word than absurd, sees America in Atlantis.

Here should be mentioned a work by Berlioux, which puts Euhemerus to the blush in the manner in which history with much detail is extorted from mythology. He holds that Atlantis was the northwestern coast of Africa; that under Ouranos and Atlas, astronomers and kings, it was the seat of a great empire which had conquered portions of America and kept a lively commercial intercourse with that country.

Ortelius in several places speaks of the belief that America was the old Atlantis, and also attributes that belief to Mercator.

That Atlantis might really have existed and disappeared, leaving the Atlantic islands as remnants, was too evident to escape notice. Ortelius suggested that the island of Gades might be a fragment of Atlantis, and the doctrine was early a favorite. Kircher, in his very curious work on the subterranean world, devotes considerable space to Atlantis, rejecting its connection with America, while he maintains its former existence, and holds that the Azores, Canaries, and other Atlantic islands were formerly parts thereof, and that they showed traces of volcanic fires in his day.

Las Casas in his history of the Indies devoted an entire chapter to Atlantis, quoting the arguments of Proclus, in his commentary on Plato, in favor of the story, though he is himself more doubtful. He also cites confirmative passages from Philo and St. Anselm, etc. He considers the question of the Atlantic isles, and cites authorities for great and sudden changes in the earth’s surface.

The same view was taken by Becman, and Fortia D’Urban. Turnefort included America in the list of remnants; and De la Borde followed Sanson in extending Atlantis to the farthest Pacific islands. Bory de St. Vincent, again, limited Atlantis to the Atlantic, and gave on a map his ideas of its contour.

D’Avezac maintains this theory in his Iles africaines de l’Océan Atlantique, p. 5-8. Carli devoted a large part of the second volume of his Lettere Americane to Atlantis, controverting Baily, who placed Atlantis in Spitzbergen. Carli goes at considerable length into the topographical and geological arguments in favor of its existence. The early naturalists, when the doctrine of great and sudden changes in the earth’s surface was in favor, were inclined to look with acquiescence on this belief. Even Lyell confessed a temptation to accept the theory of an Atlantis island in the northern Atlantic, though he could not see in the Atlantic islands trace of a mid-Atlantic bridge. About the middle of this century scholars in several departments of learning, accepting the evidences of resemblances between the product of the old and new world, were induced to turn gladly to such a connection as would have been offered by Atlantis; and the results obtained at about the same time by studies in the pre-Columbian traditions and civilization of Mexico were brought forward as supporting the same theory. That the Antilles were remnants of Atlantis; that the Toltecs were descendants from the panic-stricken fugitives of the great catastrophe, whose terrors were recorded in their traditions, as well as in those of the Egyptians, was ardently urged by Brasseur de Bourbourg.

In 1859 Retzius announced that he found a close resemblance between the skulls of the Guanches of the Canaries and the Guaranas of Brazil, and recalled the Atlantis story to explain it. In 1846 Forbes declared his belief in the former existence of a bridge of islands in the North Atlantic, and in 1856 Heer attempted to show the necessity of a similar connection from the testimony of palæontological botany.

In 1860, Unger deliberately advocated the Atlantis hypothesis to explain the likeness between the fossil flora of Europe and the living flora of America, enumerating over fifty similar species; and Kuntze found in the case of the tropical seedless banana, occurring at once in America before 1492 and in Africa, a strong evidence of the truth of the theory.

A condensed review of the scientific side of the question is given by A. Boué in his article Ueber die Rolle der Veränderungen des unorganischen Festen im grossen Massstabe in der Natur.

The deep-sea soundings taken in the Atlantic under the auspices of the governments of the United States, England, and Germany resulted in discoveries which gave a new impetus to the Atlantis theory. It was shown that, starting from the Arctic plateau, a ridge runs down the middle of the Atlantic, broadening toward the Azores, and contracting again as it trends toward the northeast coast of South America. The depth over the ridge is less than 1,000 fathoms, while the valleys on either side average 3,000; it is known after the U. S. vessel which took the soundings as the Dolphin ridge. A similar though more uniformly narrow ridge was found by the “Challenger” expedition (1873-76), extending from somewhat north of Ascension Island directly south between South America and Africa. It is known as the Challenger ridge. There is, beside, evidence for the existence of a ridge across the tropical Atlantic, connecting the Dolphin and Challenger ridges. Madeira, the Canaries, and the Cape Verde Islands are cut off from these ridges by a deep valley, but are connected by shoals with the continent. Upon the publication of the Challenger chart (Special Report, vii. 1876), those who favored the theory of communication between the continents were not slow to appropriate its disclosures in their interests (Nature, Dec. 21, 1876, xv. 158). In March, 1877, W. Stephen Mitchell delivered a lecture at South Kensington, wherein he placed in juxtaposition the theory of Unger and the revelations of the deep-sea soundings, when he announced, however, that he did not mean to assert that these ridges had ever formed a connecting link above water between the continents. Others were less cautious, but in general this interpretation did not commend itself as strongly to conservative men of science as it might have done a few years before, because such men were gradually coming to doubt the fact of changes of great moment in the earth’s surface, even those of great duration.

In 1869, M. Paul Gaffarel published his first treatise on Atlantis, advocating the truth of the story, and in 1880 he made it the subject of deeper research, utilizing the facts which ocean exploration had placed at command. This is the best work which has appeared upon this side of the question, and can only be set against the earlier work by Martin. The same theory has been supported by D. P. de Novo y Colson, who went so far as to predict the ultimate recovery of some Atlantean manuscripts from submarine grottoes of some of the Atlantic islands,—a hope which surpasses Mr. Donnelly.

Winchell found the theory too useful in his scheme of ethnology to be rejected, but it was reserved for Ignatius Donnelly to undertake the arrangement of the deductions of modern science and the data of old traditions into a set argument for the truth of Plato’s story. His book, in many ways a rather clever statement of the argument, so evidently presented only the evidence in favor of his view, and that with so little critical estimate of authorities and weight of evidence, that it attracted only uncomplimentary notice from the scientific press. It was, however, the first long presentation of the case in English, and as such made an impression on many laymen. In 1882 was also published the second volume of the Challenger Narrative, containing a report by M. Renard on the geologic character of the mid-Atlantic island known as St. Paul’s rocks. The other Atlantic islands are confessedly of volcanic origin, and this, which laymen interpreted in favor of the Atlantis theory, militated with men of science against the view that they were remnants of a sunken continent. St. Paul’s, however, was, as noted by Darwin, of doubtful character, and Renard came to the conclusion that it was composed of crystalline schists, and had therefore probably been once overlaid by masses since removed. This conclusion, which tended in favor of Atlantis, was controverted by A. Geikie and by M. E. Wadsworth, (the latter having personally inspected specimens,) on the ground that the rocks were volcanic in origin, and that, had they been schists, the inference of denudation would not follow. Dr. Guest declared that ethnologists have fully as good cause as the botanists to regard Atlantis as a fact. A. J. Weise in treating of the Discoveries of America adopted the Atlantis fable unhesitatingly, and supposes that America was known to the Egyptians through that channel.

That the whole story was invented by Plato as a literary ornament or allegorical argument, or that he thus utilized a story which he had really received from Egypt, but which was none the less a myth, was maintained even among the early Platonists, and was the view of Longinus. Even after the discovery of America many writers recognized the fabulous touch in it, as Acosta, who thought, “being well considered, they are rediculous things, resembling rather to Ovid’s tales then a Historie of Philosophie worthy of accompt,” and “cannot be held for true but among children and old folkes”—an opinion adopted by the judicious Cellarius.

Among more recent writers, D’Anville, Bartoli, Gosselin, Ukert, approved this view.

Humboldt threw the weight of his great influence in favor of the mythical interpretation, though he found the germ of the story in the older geographic myth of the destruction of Lyctonia in the Mediterranean (Orph. Argonaut., 1274, etc.); while Martin, in his work on the Timaeus, with great learning and good sense, reduced the story to its elements, concluding that such an island had never existed, the tale was not invented by Plato, but had really descended to him from Solon, who had heard it in Egypt.

Prof. Jowett regards the entire narrative as “due to the imagination of Plato, who could easily invent ‘Egyptians or anything else,’ and who has used the name of Solon ... and the tradition of the Egyptian priest to give verisimilitude to his story;” and Bunbury is of the same opinion, regarding the story as “a mere fiction,” and “no more intended to be taken seriously ... than the tale of Er the Pamphylian.” Mr. Archer-Hind, the editor of the only separate edition of the Timaeus which has appeared in England, thinks it impossible to determine “whether Plato has invented the story from beginning to end, or whether it really more or less represents some Egyptian legend brought home by Solon,” which seems to be a fitting conclusion to the whole matter.

The literature of the subject is widely scattered, but a good deal has been done bibliographically in some works which have been reserved for special mention here. The earliest is the Dissertation sur l’Atlantide, by Th. Henri Martin, wherein, beside a carefully reasoned examination of the story itself and similar geographic myths, the opposing views of previous writers are set forth in the second section, Histoire des Systèmes sur l’Atlantide, pp. 258-280. Gaffarel has in like manner given a résumé of the literature, which comes down later than that of Martin, in the two excellent treatises which he has devoted to the subject; he is convinced of the existence of such an island, but his work is marked by such care, orderliness, and fulness of citations that it is of the greatest value. The references in these treatises are made with intelligence, and are, in general, accurate and useful. That this is not the case with the work of Mr. Donnelly deprives the volume of much of the value which it might have had.

E. Fabulous Islands of the Atlantic in the Middle Ages.—Fabulous islands belong quite as much to the domain of folk-lore as to that of geography. The legends about them form a part of the great mass of superstitions connected with the sea. What has been written about these island myths is for the most part scattered in innumerable collections of folk-tales and in out-of-the-way sources, and it does not lie within the scope of the present sketch to track in these directions all that has been said. It will not be out of place, however, to refer to a few recent works where much information and many references can be found. One of the fullest collections, though not over-well sorted, is by Lieut. F. S. Bassett, consisting of brief notes made in the course of wide reading, well provided with references, which are, however, often so abbreviated as to inflict much trouble on those who would consult them,—an all too common fault. Of interest is a chapter on Les îles, in a similar work by M. Paul Sebillot. An island home has often been assigned to the soul after death, and many legends, some mediæval, some of great antiquity, deal with such islands, or with voyages to them. Some account of these will be found in Bassett, and particularly in an article by E. Beauvois in the Revue de l’histoire de Religion, where further references are to be found. Wm. F. Warren has also collected many references to the literature of this subject in the course of his endeavor to show that Paradise was at the North Pole. The long articles on Eden and Paradise in McClintock and Strong’s Biblical Encyclopedia should also be consulted.

In what way the fabulous islands of the Atlantic originated is not known, nor has the subject been exhaustively investigated. The islands of classical times, in part actual discoveries, in part born of confused reports of actual discoveries, and in part probably purely mythical, were very generally forgotten as ancient civilization declined. The other islands which succeeded them were in part reminiscences of the islands known to the ancients or invented by them, and in part products of a popular mythology, as old perhaps as that of the Greeks, but until now unknown to letters. The writers who have dealt with these islands have treated them generally from the purely geographic point of view. The islands are known principally from maps, beginning with the fourteenth century, and are not often met with in descriptive works. Formaleoni, in his attempt to show that the Venetians had discovered the West Indies prior to Columbus, made studies of the older maps which naturally led him to devote considerable attention to these islands.

They are also considered by Zurla. The first general account of them was given by Humboldt in the Examen Critique, and to what he did little if anything has since been added. D’Avezac treated the subject, giving a brief sketch of the islands known to the Arab geographers,—a curious matter which deserves more attention.

Still more recently Paul Gaffarel has treated the matter briefly, but carefully. A study of old maps by H. Wuttke, in the Jahresbericht des Vereins für Erdkunde zu Dresden, gives considerable attention to the islands; and Theobald Fischer, in his commentary on the collection of maps reproduced by Ongania, has briefly touched on the subject, as has Cornelio Desimoni in various papers in the Atti della Società Ligure di Storia patria, xiv., and other years, in the Atti dell’ Acad. dei Nuova Lincei, in the Gionale ligustico, etc. R. H. Major’s Henry the Navigator should also be consulted.

Strictly speaking, the term mythical islands ought to include, if not Frisland and Drogeo, at least the land of Bus, the island of Bimini with its fountain of life, an echo of one of the oldest of folk-tales, the island of Saxenburg, and the other non-existent islands, shoals, and rocks, with which the imagination of sailors and cartographers have connected the Atlantic even into the present century. In fact, the name is by common consent restricted to certain islands which occur constantly on old charts: the Island of St. Brandan, Antillia or Isle of the Seven Cities, Satanaxio, Danmar, Brazil, Mayda, and Isla Verte. It is interesting to note that the Arab geographers had their fabulous islands, too, though so little is known of them that it is at present impossible to say what relation they bear to those mentioned. They say that Ptolemy assigned 25,000 islands to the Atlantic, but they name and describe seventeen only, among which we may mention the Eternal Islands (Canaries? Azores?), El-Ghanam (Madeira?), Island of the Two Sorcerers (Lancerote?), etc.

There has been some difference of opinion as to which of the Atlantic islands answer to the ancient conception of the Fortunate Islands. It is probable that the idea is at the bottom of several of these, but it may be doubted whether the island of St. Brandan is not entirely due to the christianizing of this ancient fable.

We proceed now to examine the accounts of some of these islands.

St. Brandan.—St. Brandan, or Brendan, who died May 16, 577, was Abbot of Cluainfert, in Ireland, according to the legend, where he was visited by a friend, Barontus, who told him that far in the ocean lay an island which was the land promised to the saints. St. Brandan set sail for this island in company with 75 monks, and spent seven years upon the ocean, in two voyages (according to the Irish text in the MS. book of Lismore, which is probably the most archaic form of the legend), discovering this island and many others equally marvellous, including one which turned out to be the back of a huge fish, upon which they celebrated Easter. This story cannot be traced beyond the eleventh century, its oldest form being a Latin prose version in a MS. of that century. It is known also in French, English, and German translations, both prose and verse, and was evidently a great favorite in the Middle Ages. Intimately connected with the St. Brandan legend is that of St. Malo, or Maclovius, Bishop of Aleth, in Armorica, a disciple of St. Brandan, who accompanied his superior, and whose eulogists, jealous of the fame of the Irish saint, provided for the younger a voyage on his own account, with marvels transcending those found by Brandan. His church-day is November 17th. The story of St. Brandan is given by Humboldt and D’Avezac, and by Gaffarel. Further accounts will be found in the Acta Sanctorum of the Bollandists, and in the introductions and notes to the numerous editions of the voyages, among which reference only need be made to the original Latin edited by M. Jubinal, and to the English version edited by Thomas Wright for the Percy Society. A Latin text of the fourteenth century is now to be found in the Acta Sanctorum Hiberniae ex codice Salmanticensi nunc premium integre edita opera C. de Smedt et J. de Backer (Edinb. etc., 1888), 4to, pp. 111-154. As is well known, Philoponus gives an account of the voyages of St. Brandan with a curious map, in which he places the island N. W. of Spain and N. E. of the Canaries, or Insulae Fortunatae. The island of St. Brandan was at first apparently imagined in the north, but it afterward took a more southerly location. Honoré d’Autun identifies it with a certain island called Perdita, once discovered and then lost in the Atlantic; we have here, perhaps, some reminiscence of the name “Aprositos,” which Ptolemy bestows on one of the Fortunatae Insulae. In some of the earlier maps there is an inlet on the west coast of Ireland called Lacus Fortunatus, which is packed with islands which are called Insulae Fortunatae or Beatae, and sometimes given as 300 or 368 in number. But the Pizigani map of 1367 puts the Isole dicte Fortunate S. Brandany in the place of Madeira; and Behaim’s globe, in 1492, sets it down in the latitude of Cape de Verde,—a legend against it assigning the discovery to St. Brandan in 565.

It is this island which was long supposed to be seen as a mountainous land southeast of the Canaries. After the discovery of the Azores expeditions were fitted out to search for it, and were continued until 1721, which are described by Viera, and have been since retold by all writers on the subject. The island was again reported as seen in 1759.

Antillia, or Isle of Seven Cities.—The largest of these islands, the one most persistent in its form and location, is Antillia, which is depicted as a large rectangular island, extending from north to south, lying in the mid-Atlantic about lat. 35° N. This island first appears on the map of 1424, preserved at Weimar, and is found on the principal maps of the rest of the century, notably in the Bianco of 1436. On some maps of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries appears a smaller island under the name of Sette Citade, or Sete Ciudades, which is properly another name for Antillia, as Toscanelli says in his famous letter, wherein he recommended Antillia as likely to be useful as a way-station on the India voyage. We owe to Behaim the preservation on his globe of 1492 of the legend of this island. It was discovered and settled, according to him, by refugees from Spain in 714, after the defeat of King Roderick by the Moors. The settlers were accompanied by an archbishop and six bishops, each of whom built him a town. There is a story that the island was rediscovered by a Portuguese sailor in 1447.

In apparent connection with Antillia are the smaller islands Danmar or Tanmar, Reillo or Royllo, and Satanaxio. The latter alone is of special interest. Formaleoni found near Antillia, on the map of Bianco of 1436, an island with a name which he read as “Y.d laman Satanaxio,”—a name which much perplexed him, until he found, in an old Italian romance, a legend that in a certain part of India a great hand arose every day from the sea and carried off the inhabitants into the ocean. Adapting this tale to the west, he translated the name “Island of the hand of Satan,” in which interpretation Humboldt acquiesced. D’Avezac, however, was inclined to think that there were two islands, one called Delamar, a name which elsewhere appears as Danmar or Tanmar, and Satanaxio, or, as it appears on a map by Beccario at Parma, Satanagio, and suggests that the word is a corrupt form for S. Atanaxio or S. Atanagio, i. e. St. Athanasius, with which Gaffarel is inclined to agree.

Formaleoni saw in Antillia a foreknowledge of the Antilles, and Hassel believed that North and South America were respectively represented by Satanaxio and Antillia, with a strait between, just as the American continent was indeed represented after the discovery. It is certainly curious that Beccario designates the group of Antillia, Satanagio, and Danmar, as Isle de novo reperte, the name afterwards applied to the discoveries of Columbus; but it is not now believed that the fifteenth-century islands were aught but geographical fancies. To transfer their names to the real discoveries was of course easy and natural.

Brazil.—Among the islands which prefigured the Azores on fourteenth-century maps appears I. de Brazi on the Medicean portulano of 1351, and it is apparently Terceira or San Miguel. On the Pizigani map of 1367 appear three islands with this name, Insula de Bracir or Bracie, two not far from the Azores, and one off the south or southeast end of Ireland. On the Catalan map of 1375 is an Insula de Brazil in the southern part of the so-called Azores group, and an Insula de Brazil (?) applied to a group of small islands enclosed in a heavy black ring west of Ireland. The same reduplication occurs in the Solerio of 1385, in a map of 1426 preserved at Regensburg, in Bianco’s map of 1436, and in that of 1448: here de Braxil is the easternmost of the Azores group (i. e. y de Colombi, de Zorzi, etc.), while the large round island—more like a large ink-blot than anything else—west of Ireland is y de Brazil d. binar. In a map in St. Mark’s Library, Venice, dated about 1450, Brazil appears in four places. Fra Mauro puts it west of Ireland, and it so appears in Ptolemy of 1519, and Ramusio in 1556; but Mercator and Ortelius inscribe it northwest of the Azores.

Humboldt has shown that brazil-wood, being imported into Europe from the East Indies long before the discovery of America, gave its name to the country in the west where it was found in abundance, and he infers that the designation of the Atlantic island was derived from the same source. The duplication of the name, however, seems to point to a confusion of different traditions, and in the Brazil off Ireland we doubtless have an attempt to establish the mythical island of Hy Brazil, or O’Brasile, which plays a part as a vanishing island in Irish legends, although it cannot be traced to its origin. In the epic literature of Ireland relating to events of the sixth and subsequent centuries, and which was probably written down in the twelfth, there are various stories of ocean voyages, some involuntary, some voluntary, and several, like the voyage of the sons of Ua Corra about 540, of St. Brandan about 560, and of Mailduin in the eighth century, taking place in the Atlantic, and resulting in the discovery of numerous fabulous islands. The name of Brazil does not appear in these early records, but it seems to belong to the same class of legends. It is first mentioned, as far as I know, by William Betoner, called William of Worcester, who calls the island Brasyle and Brasylle, and says that July 15, 1480, his brother-in-law, John Jay, began a voyage from Bristol in search of the island, returning Sept. 18 without having found it. This evidently belongs to the series of voyages made by Bristol men in search of this island, which is mentioned by Pedro d’Ayala, the Spanish ambassador to England, in his famous letter of July 25, 1498, where he says that such voyages in search of Brazylle and the seven cities had been made for seven years past, “according to the fancies of the Genoese,” meaning Sebastian Cabot.

It would seem that the search for Brazil was of older date than Cabot’s arrival. He probably gave an additional impetus to the custom, adding to the stories of the fairy isles the legends of the Sette Citade or Antillia. Hardiman, quoting from a MS. history of Ireland, in the library of the Royal Irish Academy, written about 1636, mentions an “iland, which lyeth far att sea, on the west of Connaught, and some times is perceived by the inhabitants of the Oules and Iris ... and from Saint Helen Head. Like wise several seamen have discovered it, ... one of whom, named Captain Rich, who lives about Dublin, of late years had a view of the land, and was so neere that he discovered a harbour ... but could never make to land” because of “a mist which fell upon him.... Allsoe in many old mappes ... you still find it by the name of O’Brasile under the longitude of 03°, 00´, and the latitude of 50° 20´.” In 1675 a pretended account of a visit to this island was published in London, which is reprinted by Hardiman.

An account of the island as seen from Arran given in O’Flaherty’s Sketch of the Island of Arran, is quoted by H. Halliday Sterling, Irish Minstrelsy, p. 307 (London, 1887). Mr. Marshall, in a note in Notes and Queries, Sept. 22, 1883 (6th s., viii. 224), quotes Guest, Origines Celticae (London, 1883), i. 126, and R. O’Flaherty, Ogygia, sive rerum Hibernicarum chronologiae (London, 1685; also in English translation, Dublin, 1793), as speaking of O’Brazile. The latter work I have not seen. Mr. Marshall also quotes a familiar allusion to it by Jeremy Taylor (Dissuasive from Popery, 1667). This note was replied to in the same periodical, Dec. 15, 1883, by Mr. Kerslake, “N.” and W. Fraser. Fraser’s interest had been attracted by the entry of the island—much smaller than usual—on a map of the French Geographer Royal, Le Sieur Tassin, 1634-1652, and he read a paper before the Geological Society of Ireland, Jan. 20, 1870, suggesting that Brazil might be the present Porcupine Bank, once above water. On the same map Rockall is laid down as two islands, where but a solitary rock is now known. Brasil appears on the maps of the last two centuries, with Mayda and Isle Verte, and even on the great Atlas by Jefferys, 1776, is inserted, although called “imaginary island of O’Brasil.” It grows constantly smaller, but within the second half of this century has appeared on the royal Admiralty charts as Brazil Rock.

It would be too tedious to enumerate the numerous other imaginary islands of the Atlantic to which clouds, fogs, and white caps have from time to time given rise. They are marked on all charts of the last century in profusion; mention, however, may be made of the “land of Bus” or Busse, which Frobisher’s expedition coasted along in 1576, and which has been hunted for with the lead even as late as 1821, though in vain.

F. Toscanelli’s Atlantic Ocean.—It has been shown elsewhere (Vol. II. pp. 30, 31, 38, 90, 101, 103) that Columbus in the main accepted the view of the width of the Atlantic, on the farther side of which Asia was supposed to be, which Toscanelli had calculated; and it has not been quite certain what actual measurement should be given to this width, but recent discoveries tend to make easier a judgment in the matter.

When Humboldt wrote the Examen Critique, Toscanelli’s letter to Columbus, of unknown date, enclosing a copy of the one he sent to Martinez in 1474, was known only in the Italian form in Ulloa’s translation of the Historie del S. D. Fernando Colombo (Venice, 1571), and in the Spanish translation of Ulloa’s version by Barcia in the Historiades primitivos de las Indias occidentales (Madrid, 1749), i. 5 bis, which was reprinted by Navarrete, Coleccion de los viages y descubrimientos, etc., ii. p. 1. In the letter to Martinez, in this form, it is said that there are in the map which accompanied it twenty-six spaces between Lisbon and Quisai, each space containing 250 miles according to the Ulloa version, but according to the re-translation of Barcia 150 miles. This, with several other changes made by Barcia, were followed by Navarrete and accepted as correct by Humboldt, who severely censures Ximenes for adopting the Italian rendering in his Gnomone fiorent. But the Latin copy of the letter in Columbus’s handwriting, discovered by Harrisse and made public (with fac-simile) in his D. Fernando Colon (Seville, 1871), sustained the correctness of Ulloa’s version, giving 250 miliaria to the space. This authoritative rendering also showed that while the translator had in general followed the text, he had twice inserted a translation of miles into degrees, and once certainly, incorrectly, making in one place 100 miles = 35 leagues, and in another, 2,500 miles = 225 leagues. Probably this discrepancy led to the omissions made by Barcia; he was wrong, however, in changing the number 250, supposing the 150 not to be a typographical error, and in omitting the phrase, “which space (from Lisbon to Quinsai) is about the third part of the sphere.” The Latin text showed, too, that this whole passage about distances was not in the Martinez letter at all, but formed the end of the letter to Columbus, since in the Latin it follows the date of the Martinez letter, into which it has been interpolated by a later hand. Finally the publication of Las Casas’s Historia de las Indias (Madrid, 1875) gave us another Spanish version, which differs from Barcia’s in closely agreeing with the Ulloa version, and which gives the length of a space at 250 miles.

There were then 26 × 250 = 6500 miles between Lisbon and Quinsai, and this was about one third of the circumference of the earth in this latitude, but it is not clear whether Roman or Italian miles were meant.

If the MS. in the Biblioteca Nazionale at Florence [Cod. Magliabechiano Classe xi. num. 121], described by G. Uzielli in the Bollettino della Società Geografica Italiana, x. 1 (1873), 13-28 (“Ricerche intorno a Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli, ii. Della grandezza della terra secondo Paolo Toscanelli”), actually represents the work of Toscanelli, it is of great value in settling this point. The MS. is inscribed “Discorso di Mo Paolo Puteo Toscanelli sopra la cometa del 1456.” In it were found two papers: 1. A plain projection in rectangular form apparently for use in sketching a map. It is divided into spaces, each subdivided into five degrees, and numbers 36 spaces in length. It is believed by Sig. Uzielli that this is the form used in the map sent to Martinez. If this be so, the 26 spaces between Lisbon and Quinsai = 130°. 2. A list of the latitude and longitude of various localities, at the end of which is inscribed this table:

Gradus continet .68 miliaria minus 3ª unius.
Miliarum tria millia bracchia.
Bracchium duos palmas.
Palmus. 12. uncias. 7. filos.

The Florentine mile of 3,000 braccia da terra contains, according to Sig. Uzielli, 1653.6m. (as against 1481m. to the Roman mile). Hence Toscanelli estimated a degree of the meridian at 111,927m, or only 552m. more than the mean adopted by Bessel and Bayer. Since, according to the letter, one space = 250 miles, and by the map one space = 5°, we have 50 miles to a degree, which would point to an estimate for a latitude of about 42°, allowing 67 2-3 miles to an equatorial degree. Lisbon was entered in the table of Alphonso at 41° N. (true lat. 38° 41’ N.) By this reckoning Quinsai would fall 124° west of Lisbon or 10° west of San Francisco. It does not appear that the Florence MS. can be traced directly to Toscanelli, but the probability is certainly strong that we have here some of the astronomer’s working papers, and that Ximenes did not deserve the rebuke administered by Humboldt for allowing 250 miles to a space, and assuming that a space contained five degrees. Certainly Humboldt’s use of 150 miles is unjustifiable, and his calculation of 52° as the angular distance between Lisbon and Quinsai, according to Toscanelli, is very much too small, whatever standard we take for the mile. If we follow Uzielli, the result obtained by Ruge (Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen, p. 230), 104°, is also too small.

G.Early Maps of the Atlantic Ocean.—By the Editor—The cartographical history of the Atlantic Ocean is, even down to our own day, an odd mixture of uncertain fact and positive fable. The island of Bresil or Brazil was only left off the British Admiralty charts within twenty years (see Vol. II. p. 36), and editions of the most popular atlases, like Colton’s, within twenty-five years have shown Jacquet Island, the Three Chimneys, Maida, and others lying in the mid-sea. It may possibly be a fair question if some of the reports of islands and rocks made within recent times may not have had a foundation in temporary uprisings from the bed of the sea. We must in this country depend for the study of this subject on the great collections of facsimiles of early maps made by Santarem, Kunstmann, Jomard, and on the Sammlung which is now in progress at Venice, under the editing of Theobald Fischer, and published by Ongania.

We may place the beginning of the Atlantic cartography in the map of Marino Sanuto in 1306, who was first of the nautical map-makers of that century to lay down the Canaries; but Sanuto was by no means sure of their existence, if we may judge from his omission of them in his later maps.

There are two maps of Hygden (a.d. 1350), but the abundance of islands which they present can hardly be said to show more than a theory. There is more likelihood of well considered work in the Portolano Laurenziano-Gaddiano (a.d. 1351), preserved in the Biblioteca Mediceo-Laurenziana at Florence, of which Ongania, of Venice, published a fac-simile in 1881. There are two maps of Francisco Pizigani, which seem to give the Canaries, Madeira, and the Azores better than any earlier one. One of these maps (1367) is in the national library at Parma, and the other (1373) is in the Ambrosian library at Milan (Studi biog. e bibliog., vol. ii. pp. viii, 57, 58). The 1367 map is given by Jomard and Santarem. The most famous of all these early maps is the Catalan Mappemonde of 1375, preserved in the great library at Paris. It gives the Canaries and other islands further north, but does not reach to the Azores. These last islands are included, however, in another Catalan planisphere of not far from the same era, which is preserved in the national library at Florence, and has been reproduced by Ongania (1881). The student will need to compare other maps of the fourteenth century, which can be found mentioned in the Studi, etc., with references in the Kohl Maps, sect. 1. The phototypic series of Ongania is the most important contribution to this study, though the yellow tints of the original too often render the details obscurely. So for the next century there are the same guides; but a number of conspicuous charts may well be mentioned. Chief among them are those of Andrea Bianco contained in the Atlas (1436), in the Biblioteca Marciana at Venice, published by Ongania (1871), who also published (1881) the Carta Nautica of Bianco, in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan.

ANDREAS BENINCASA, 1476.

After a sketch in St. Martin’s Atlas, pl. vii.

The 1436 map has been reproduced in colors in Pietro Amat de San Filippo’s Planisferio disegnato del 1436 (Bollettino Soc. Geografia, 1879, p. 560); and a sketch of the Atlantic part is given in the Allgem. Geog. Ephemeriden, xxiv. no. 248.

During the next twenty years or more, the varying knowledge of the Atlantic is shown in a number of maps, a few of which may be named:—The Catalan map “de Gabriell de Valsequa, faite à Mallorcha en 1439,” which shows the Azores, and which Vespucius is said to have owned (Santarem, pl. 54). The planisphere “in lingua latina dell’ anno 1447,” in the national library at Florence (Ongania, 1881). The world maps of Giovanni Leardo (Johannes Leardus), 1448 and 1452, the former of which is given in Santarem (pl. 25,—also Hist. Cartog. iii. 398), and the latter reproduced by Ongania, 1880. One is in the Ambrosian library, and the other in the Museo Civico at Vicenza (cf. Studi, etc., ii. 72, 73). In the Biblioteca Vittorio Emanuele at Rome there is the sea-chart of Bartolomaeus de Pareto of 1455, on which we find laid down the Fortunate Islands, St. Brandan’s, Antillia, and Royllo. The World of Fra Mauro has been referred to elsewhere in the present volume.

We come now to the conditions of the Atlantic cartography immediately preceding the voyage of Columbus. The most prominent specimens of this period are the various marine charts of Grogioso and Andreas Benincasa from 1461 to 1490. Some of these are given by Santarem, Lelewel, and St. Martin; but the best enumeration of them is given in the Studi biog. e bibliog. della Soc. Geog. Ital. ii. 66, 77-84, 92, 99, 100. Of Toscanelli’s map of 1474, which influenced Columbus, we have no sketch, though some attempts have been made to reconstruct it from descriptions. (Cf. Vol. II. p. 103; Harrisse’s Christophe Colomb., i. 127, 129.) Brief mention may also be made of the Laon globe of 1486 (dated 1493), of which D’Avezac gives a projection in the Bulletin de la Soc. de Géog. xx. 417; of the Majorcan (Catalan) Carta nautica of about 1487 (cf. Studi, etc., ii. no. 397; Bull. Soc. Géog., i. 295); of the chart in the Egerton MSS., Brit. Mus., made by Christofalo Soligo about the same time, and which has no dearth of islands (cf. Studi, etc., i. 89); of those of Nicola Fiorin, Canepa, and Giacomo Bertran (Studi, etc., ii. 82, 86, and no. 398). The globe of Behaim (1492) gives the very latest of these ante-Columbian views (see Vol. II. 105).

It took, after this, a long time for the Atlantic to be cleared, even partially, of these intrusive islands, and to bring the proper ones into accurate relations. How the old ideas survived may be traced in the maps of Ruysch, 1508 (Vol. II. 115); Coppo, 1528, with its riot of islands (II. 127); Mercator, 1541 (II. 177); Bordone, 1547; Zaltière, 1566 (II. 451); Porcacchi, 1572 (II. 453); Ortelius, 1575, 1587,—not to continue the series further.

NOTE.—The left of the annexed cuts is from Bordone’s Isolario, 1547; the right one is an extract from the “World” of Ortelius, 1587.