Either Nicolò Zeno of 1558 invented the whole matter, building up his imposture by the aid of maps and information already existent and accessible, or he actually had some sort of old sketch map and fragments of letters and has recast them with more modern aids quite at his convenience, leaving no certain trace of the original outlines or statements. It comes to much the same thing in either case. Also in either case his unscrupulous and misleading achievements in imaginary cartography remain as historic facts. For a century or more he supplied the maps of the world with several new great islands; he shifted others widely into new positions; he adorned other regions with new names that were loath to depart; and he presented a story of pre-Columbian discovery of America which was long accepted as true and is not wholly discarded even yet. CHAPTER X ANTILLIA AND THE ANTILLES There are two names still in common use for American regions, which long antedate Columbus and most likely commemorate achievements of earlier explorers. They are Brazil and the Antilles. The former is earlier on the maps and records; but the case for Antillia, as an American pre-Columbian map item, is in some respects less complex and more obvious. ANTILLIA A good many decades before the New World became known as such, Antillia was recognized as a legitimate geographical feature. A comparatively late and generally familiar instance of such mention occurs in Toscanelli’s letter of 1474 to Columbus,[237] recommending this island as a convenient resting point on the sea route to Cathay. Its authenticity has been questioned, notably by the venerable and learned Henry Vignaud,[238] but at least some one wrote it and in it reflected the viewpoint of the time. Nordenskiöld in his elaborate and invaluable “Periplus” declares: “As the mention of this large island, the name of which was afterwards given to the Antilles, in the portolanos of the fourteenth century, is probably owing to some vessel being storm-driven across the Atlantic (as, according to Behaim, happened to a Spanish vessel in 1414), those maps on which this island is marked must be reckoned as Americana.”[239] The word “fourteenth” is probably an accidental substitute for “fifteenth.” The reference to Behaim undoubtedly means the often-quoted inscription on his globe of 1492, which avers that “1414 a ship from Spain got nighest it without being endangered.”[240] 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.