and there is no reason to believe that the islands for which he had no
room would have differed from theirs in his showing, if admissible, any
more than his Antillia differs; that is to say, hardly at all.
Humboldt was so impressed by this map of Bianco that he took the pains
of measuring upon it the distance of Antillia from Portugal, making
this about two hundred and forty leagues: an unreliable test, one would
say, for the distances over the western waste of waters probably were
not drawn to scale nor supposed to approach exactness. For that matter,
the interval between Portugal and the Azores, as shown on maps for
nearly a hundred years, was greatly underestimated, and the discrepancy
becomes more glaring as the islands lie farther westward, Flores and
Corvo being conspicuous examples. We should naturally expect to find
the West Indies reported much nearer than they really are by anyone
mapping a record of them. Perhaps the explanation lies in a disposition
of cartographers to expect and allow for a great deal of nautical
exaggeration in the mariners’ yarns that reached them. A careful man
might come at last to believe in the existence of an island but doubt
if it were really so very far away.
THE PARETO MAP OF 1455
Pareto, 1455, has a very interesting and elaborate map[259] (Fig.
21) showing Antillia, Reylla, and I in Mar (the latter without name)
in the orthodox size, shape, and position, but with a great gap
between Antillia and I in Mar where Salvagio should be. Very likely
it was there once. Perhaps this is another case of fading away. One
doubts whether the loss might not still be retrieved by more powerful
magnifying glasses and close study of the significant interval. Pareto
is unmistakably disclosing the same series of islands as the others.
It may be that from him Roselli borrowed the inaccurate “roella” for
Reylla, since Pareto is earlier in using a similar form (Roillo).
[Illustration: FIG. 21--Section of the Pareto map of 1455 showing
the Antilles, St. Brendan’s Islands, Daculi, and others. (After
Kretschmer’s hand-copied reproduction.)]
THE BENINCASA MAP OF 1482
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