appears, and this was translated by both Formaleoni and Humboldt as
meaning "the Island of the Hand of Satan." D'Avezac was the first to
suggest that the reference was to two separate islands, the one named "De
la Man" or "Danman," and the other "Satanaxio." He further suggests--
followed by Gaffarel--that the name of the island may originally have been
San Atanagio, thus making its baptism a tribute to St. Athanasius instead
of to Satan. This would certainly have been a curious transformation, and
almost as unexpected in its way as the original conversion of the sinful
brothers from outlaws to missionaries.
XV. ANTILLIA
The name Antillia appears first, but not very clearly, on the Pizigani
map of 1367; then clearly on a map of 1424, preserved at Weimar, on that
of Bianco in 1436, and on the globe of Beheim in 1492, which adds in an
inscription the story of the Seven Bishops. On some maps of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries there appears near it a smaller island under the
name of Sette Cidade, or Sete Ciudades, which is properly another name for
the same island. Toscanelli, in his famous letter to Columbus, recommended
Antillia as a good way-station for his voyage to India. The island is said
by tradition to have been re-discovered by a Portuguese sailor in 1447.
Tradition says that this sailor went hastily to the court of Portugal to
announce the discovery, but was blamed for not having remained longer, and
so fled. It was supposed to be "a large, rectangular island extending from
north to south, lying in the mid Atlantic about lat. 35 N." An ample
bibliography will be found in Winsor's "Narrative and Critical History,"
I. p. 48, with maps containing Antillia, I. pp. 54 (Pizigani's), 56, 58.
After the discovery of America, Peter Martyr states (in 1493) that
Hispaniola and the adjacent islands were "Antillae insulae," meaning that
they were identical with the group surrounding the fabled Antillia
(Winsor's "Narrative and Critical History," I. p. 49); and Schöner, in the
dedicatory letter of his globe of 1523, says that the king of Castile,
through Columbus, has discovered _Antiglias Hispaniam Cubam quoque_.
It was thus that the name Antilles came to be applied to the islands
discovered by Columbus; just as the name Brazil was transferred from an
imaginary island to the new continent, and the name Seven Cities was
applied to the pueblos of New Mexico by those who discovered them. (See J.
H. Simpson, "Coronado's March in Search of the Seven Cities of Cibola,"
Smithsonian Institution, 1869, pp. 209-340.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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