The second map on Nordenskiöld’s New World list is “Becharius 1426,”
a Latinization of the surname of Battista Beccario and at least not
so weird a transformation as Humboldt’s “Beclario or Bedrazio.”
Apparently the year of this map has not been doubted, but there is a
lack of first-hand evidence that the original contains Antillia. No
reproduction of this map had been published prior to the writer’s paper
on St. Brendan’s Islands in the July, 1919, _Geographical Review_,
nor, so far as is known, has its extreme western part been copied in
any way. The section there reproduced, and herewith reprinted only
slightly curtailed (Fig. 3), is one of several sent me in response
to arrangements, made before the war, for a photograph of the map,
but by some mistake the very portion that would have been conclusive
was omitted, and all attempts to remedy the error have failed. But,
if there were any inscription concerning recently discovered islands
located as in his later map, some part of it at least would probably be
seen on what I have; and for this and other reasons I do not believe
that Antillia is delineated or named on the Beccario map of 1426.
THE BECCARIO MAP OF 1435
The addition to fifteenth-century geography of a great group of large
western islands roughly corresponding to a part of the West Indies and
Florida rests mainly on the testimony of the following maps now to
be discussed: Beccario 1435, Bianco 1436, Pareto 1455, Roselli 1468,
Benincasa 1482, and the anonymous Weimar map probably by Freducci and
dating somewhere after 1481. Of these the most complete as well as
the earliest is Beccario’s[256] (Fig. 20). He gives the islands the
collective title of “Insulle a novo rep’te” (newly reported islands),
which may refer to the discovery recorded by Behaim for 1414 or to
some more recent experience. The interval would not be much greater
than that between the first landing of Columbus and the narrative of
Peter Martyr beginning with equivalent words. It is likely, however,
that some lost map or maps preceded Beccario’s, for the artificially
regular outlines of his islands, though in accord with the fashion
of cartography in his time, seem rather out of keeping with a first
appearance. The type had somehow fixed itself with curious minuteness
and was repeated faithfully by his successors. In spite of these
impossibly symmetrical details and some discrepancies as to individual
direction of elongation and latitude, the fact remains that in the
Atlantic there is no such great group except the Antilles and that
the general correspondence is too surprising to be explained by mere
accident or conjecture. Surely some mariner had visited Cuba and some
of its neighbors before 1435.
[Illustration: FIG. 20--Section of the Beccario map of 1435 showing
the four islands of the Antilles, St. Brendan’s Islands, Daculi, and
others. (After Uzielli’s photographic facsimile.)]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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