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. [Illustration] [Illustration] 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. CHAPTER II. PRE-COLUMBIAN EXPLORATIONS. BY JUSTIN WINSOR, THE EDITOR. IN the previous chapter, in attempting to trace the possible connection of the new world with the old in the dimmest past, it was hard, if not hopeless, to find among the entangled myths a path that we could follow with any confidence into the field of demonstrable history. It is still a doubt how far we exchange myths for assured records, when we enter upon the problems of pre-Columbian explorations, which it is the object of the present chapter to discuss. We are to deal with supposable colonizations, from which the indigenous population of America, as the Spaniards found it, was sprung, wholly or in part; and we are to follow the venturesome habits of navigators, who sought experience and commerce in a strange country, and only incidentally left possible traces of their blood in the peoples they surprised. If Spain, Italy, and England gained consequence by the discoveries of Columbus and Cabot, there were other national prides to be gratified by the priority which the Basques, the Normans, the Welsh, the Irish, and the Scandinavians, to say nothing of Asiatic peoples, claimed as their share in the gift of a new world to the old. The records which these peoples present as evidences of their right to be considered the forerunners of the Spanish and English expeditions have in every case been questioned by those who are destitute of the sympathetic credence of a common kinship. The claims which Columbus and Cabot fastened upon Spain and England, to the disadvantage of Italy, who gave to those rival countries their maritime leaders, were only too readily rejected by Italy herself, when the opportunity was given to her of paling such borrowed glories before the trust which she placed in the stories of the Zeni brothers. * * * * *