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.
Ruysch’s map of 1508 is a little more vague in its Antillia inscription as to the time of this adventure.[241] He says it was discovered by the Spaniards long ago; but perhaps this means a rediscovery, for he also chronicles the refuge sought there by King Roderick in the eighth century.